Spinoza Now

SPINOZA NOW
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SPINOZA NOW
Dimitris Vardoulakis
editor
University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis
London
A different version of chapter 14 was previously published
as Alexander Garca Dttmann, Viertes Modell: Leben und
Tod, in Derrida und ich: Das Problem der Dekonstruktion, 13750
(Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2008).
Copyright 2011 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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Spinoza now / Dimitris Vardoulakis, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-7280-6 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8166-7281-3 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Spinoza, Benedictus de, 16321677. I. Vardoulakis, Dimitris.
B3998.S745 2011
199'.492dc22
2010032605
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator

and employer.
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Note on References to Spinozas Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Editors Note. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Spinoza Now: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Dimitris Vardoulakis
Part I. Strategies for Reading Spinoza

1. Spinoza and the Conflict of Interpretations . . . . . . . 3
Christopher Norris
2. What Is a Proof in Spinozas Ethics?. . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Alain Badiou
3. The Joyful Passions in Spinozas
Theory of Relations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Simon Duffy
4. Spinozas Ass. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Justin Clemens
Part II. Politics, Theology, and Interpretation

5. Toward an Inclusive Universalism:
Spinozas Ethics of Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Michael Mack
6. Prophecy without Prophets: Spinoza and
Maimonides on Law and the Democracy
of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Arthur J. Jacobson
7. Interjecting Empty Spaces: Imagination
and Interpretation in Spinozas Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Warren Montag
8. Marx before Spinoza: Notes toward
an Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Cesare Casarino
Part III. Spinoza and the Arts
9. Image and Machine: Introduction to
Thomas Hirschhorns Spinoza Monument . . . . . . . . 237
Sebastian Egenhofer
10. Spinoza, Ratiocination, and Art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Anthony Uhlmann
11. An Inter-action: Rembrandt and Spinoza. . . . . . . . 277
Mieke Bal and Dimitris Vardoulakis
Part IV. Encounters about Life and Death

12. Power and Ontology between
Heidegger and Spinoza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Antonio Negri
13. A Thought beyond Dualisms,
Creationist and Evolutionist Alike. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
A. Kiarina Kordela
14. A Matter of Life and Death:
Spinoza and Derrida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Alexander Garca Dttmann
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Note on References
to Spinozas Works
the various translations of Spinozas works offer often signifi-

cantly different interpretations of the meaning of his original Latin
text. For this reason, the contributors have been free to choose their
preferred translations or to translate themselves the Latin from the
established text of Spinozas works in the Gebhardt edition of the
Opera.
In references to the Ethics, the Roman numeral indicates the part
of the Ethics to which the author is referring, e.g., Ethics I is Ethics,
Part I; Ethics II is Ethics, Part II; and so on. In addition, the following
abbreviations are used:
A axiom
Ap. appendix
C corollary
D definition
L lemma
P proposition
Pr. proof
S scholium
For instance, Ethics II, P7, refers to Ethics, Part II, Proposition 7, and
Ethics IV, P34S, refers to Ethics, Part IV, Scholium to Proposition 34.
vii
Editors Note
Spinoza Now attempts to place Spinoza in a contemporary context.

This project started in 2005 at the Centre for Ideas of the Victorian
College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia. A number of the papers
published here were first presented at the conference Wandering
with Spinoza, held at the Centre for Ideas from September 13 to
15, 2006. The editor would like to thank the director of the Centre
for Ideas, Elizabeth Presa, for her unwavering belief in the value of
such a project. The editor also thanks Norma Lam-Saw for research
assistance.
ix
Spinoza Now:
An Introduction
dimitris vardoulakis
the title of this collectionSpinoza Nowhighlights the im-

portance Spinoza places on the present moment for any political
or cultural investigation. It also includes contributions that are of
the presentattempts to think about, on, and with Spinoza in ad-
dressing contemporary issues and that are in response to current
directions in Spinoza studies. I will address these two aspects of the
title in turn.
For this much is quite certain, and proved to be true in our Eth-
ics, that men are necessarily subject to passions. This statement,
from Spinozas Political Treatise (1, 5), encapsulates the importance
of the present for his philosophy.1 Even though Spinoza insists on a
knowledge from the perspective of eternity or the infinite, communal
living is nevertheless permeated with the affects each one feels while
living. A desire is always in the present. Thus philosophy for Spinoza
is inextricably linked to life, to the now of existence.
Such a position is not a simple vitalism. The thought in Political
Treatise that emphasizes the now may be better outlined in relation
to what it opposes. Spinoza opens the Treatise by treating two op-
posing positions about human interaction: optimism and pessimism.
The optimists are discussed in the first paragraph of the Treatise.
They are those philosophers who look on the passions as vices to
be avoided at all cost. So it is their custom to deride, bewail, berate
... or execrate the passions. Thus they construct political theories
that seek to eliminate affects. Spinoza is not simply skeptical about
xi
xii I N TRODUCTI ON
such philosophizing because it borders on fantasy or could be put

into effect in Utopia; he finds such theories so unfounded that they
become amusing: for the most part it is not ethics ... but satire.
The optimists hope to suppress the present so as to imagine a future
that has tamed the passions is entirely devoid of practical significance.
The pessimists are discussed in the second paragraph of the
Treatise. They are those who are distrustful of politicians. Because
politicians know from experience that there will be vices as long
as there are men, they fear people. This leads them to practices
that may be construed as cunning or wicked, especially in the eyes
of theologians, who believe that sovereign powers ought to deal
with public affairs according to the same moral principles as are
binding on the private individual. However, this collapse of the
distinction between private and public is yet another unfounded
fancy, one that is built on fearnot hope. If past experience points
to human vice, there is all the more reason to deal with that fear in
contemporary political practice rather than seeking to repress it with
moralizing.
As Deleuze has emphasized, Spinoza cannot be understood as a
moral philosopher, and this means that Spinoza is mindful of the gap
or break between false hope and crippling fearbetween a utopian
belief in the future and a dread of the past. Between them is located
the now. At this space, ethics develops.
A brief overview of Spinozas reception is required to show
the second aspect of the title, namely, how Spinoza has emerged
as a figure who allows us to think of our contemporary situation.2
Rejection was the first significant reaction to Spinozas work.3 The
seed for that reaction was already sown in 1670, when Spinozas
Theologico-Political Treatise was published. The book contained a
sustained argument against revealed religion by questioning, for
example, the existence of miracles. From that moment onward,
Spinoza was painted as an atheist, and to be perceived as a follower
of Spinoza was indeed a dangerous position in which to find one-
self. Consequently, even after the Opera Posthuma were published
shortly after Spinozas death in 1677, few actually read Spinozas
works. To compound this, twenty years later Pierre Bayle wrote an
article on Spinoza in the Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) that
interpreted Spinoza as collapsing the distinction between God and
IN TROD UCT ION xiii
naturea position that was understood to lead to Spinozas atheism.

For years to come, the philosophical community would get their
Spinoza from Bayles summary.
The identification of God and nature received a name at the
beginning of the eighteenth century: pantheism. Spinoza was seen as
recognizing God in everything, which only led to the inference that
he identified God in nothing. At the same time, interpreting Spinoza
as a vehement atheist attracted the attention of those who were keen
to challenge the superstitions of religion and the authority of the
churches on revealed religion. Thus Spinoza was becoming aligned
with Enlightenment, or at least with a polemical and combative
strand of Enlightenment, while at the same time the prominent
figures of the Enlightenment did not refer to Spinoza and distanced
themselves from what they probably saw as opprobrious attacks on
religion. This ambiguity erupted into the famous Pantheismusstreit,
or Pantheist Controversy, at the end of the eighteenth century.
Shortly after Lessings death, Jacobi contested in 1785 that Lessing
had confessed to him that he was a Spinozist. Lessing was one of the
figureheads of the Enlightenment in Germany as well as in Europe,
and Jacobis claim amounted to an accusation that Enlightenment
deified reason. As Frederick Beiser puts it, the belief in Spinozas
cosmic God seemed to be the religion of science itself.4 In other
words, Jacobi sought to argue that pantheism, or the identification of
God with nature, was the position that any system that places reason
over belief is bound to adopt. When Lessings friend Mendelssohn,
himself a leading figure of the Enlightenment, responded to Jacobi,
suddenly Spinoza emerged as the mtier of the Enlightenment
project.
If the Pantheist Controversy implicated luminaries of the En-
lightenment and thereby exposed its limitations, Jacobis second
public controversy involving Spinoza had a generative effect. This
second controversy related to Fichtes philosophy and unfolded in
spring 1799.5 The transcendental idealist notion of the subject had
now become Jacobis target. Jacobi again argued that there are two
options, this time articulated in terms of subjectivity: either the
subject is absolute, as Fichte argues, in which case the subject is
deified, or there is space for belief and the subject is not commen-
surate with reason. This controversy played a role in Fichtes losing
xiv I NTR ODUCTI ON
his position at Jena University, where his students included Hegel

and Schelling as well as Novalis, the Schlegels, and Hlderlinor,
in sum, the figures who would effect the transition to romanticism.
Thus they were all exposed to Spinoza as the figure who unraveled
their professor, Fichte. Paradoxically, their exposure to Spinoza led
to a different interpretation of pantheism, which was now seen
as positive because it affirmed the importance of nature or what
they referred to as the particular. Novaliss designation of Spinoza
as God-intoxicated man, or Hegels assertion that the whole of
Spinoza can be read in relation to Proposition 7 of Book II of the
Ethics (the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order
and connection of things), should be understood in this context.6
The next couple generations of philosophers exhibit a positive
receptiveness of Spinoza. For instance, Marx ranked Spinoza as
one of his formative influences, whereas Nietzsche saw in Spinoza
his only genuine predecessor. Thus, whereas the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries viewed Spinoza with suspicion and hostility,
in the nineteenth century Spinoza became the secret conversant of
romanticism and its aftermath.
A crucial reason why Spinoza was never addressed in any thor-
ough fashion by the philosophers of the nineteenth century was
that there was not much scholarship on which they could build. This
was rectified in the twentieth century, which saw an explosion of
Spinoza scholarship. It started in the first decades of the twentieth
century with the voluminous works appearing mostly in Germany
on the context of Spinozas philosophy. In America, Harry Austryn
Wolfson produced a remarkable account of the sources of Spinozas
arguments,7 and more recently Yirmiyahu Yovel has provided an
authoritative account both of Spinozas context and its impact on
subsequent philosophies.8 Alongside these works that concentrate
on the external circumstances of Spinozas thought, there is another
side to this approach to Spinoza in the twentieth century, one that
concentrates on the internal structure of Spinozas argument and,
in particular, on the Ethics. Perhaps the most prominent example
here is Martial Guroults Spinoza. The two volumes of exegesis
of Part I and Part II of the Ethics offer a close analysis of the phi-
losophy that directed one toward grasping the architectonics of the
IN TRODUCT ION xv
book, that is, on presenting the structure or system of the work as

a whole.9 Edwin Curley has attempted something similar, although
less voluminous, in America.10 In sum, this approach as a wholein
its concentration on both the external or contextual circumstances
of Spinozas philosophy and the internal structure of his workcan
be characterized as encyclopedic. The impact of this encyclopedic
approach has been that it established Spinoza as a topic of study and
disengaged the name Spinoza from both impassioned renuncia-
tions and their correlative, strategic appropriations.
Another approach to Spinoza emerged in the 1960s and can be
characterized as an intensification of the romantic fascination with
Spinoza. If, in Novaliss already quoted phrase, Spinoza was a God-
intoxicated man in the sense that he sought the universal in the
particular, this focusing on the particular is now further elaborated,
showing its implications for a philosophy of power. The two instru-
mental figures in this new approach to Spinoza were Louis Althusser
and Gilles Deleuze. Even though Althusser did not publish a lot on
Spinoza, as Warren Montag has shown, his notion of the structure is
indebted to Spinozas notion of the immanent cause, that is, a cause
present only through its effects. Thus Spinoza gave the means to
Althusser to evade a teleological or scientific Marxism that sought
reality in an inexorable and analyzable chain of causal relations of
production. At roughly the same time, Deleuzes book Expressionism
in Philosophy argued that expression in Spinoza undoes traditional
representationalism in philosophy. According to Deleuze, the ques-
tion that motivates Spinozas ethics is what can a body do?; that is,
what kind of relations produce and are produced by the individual?11
Althussers and Deleuzes interpretations of Spinoza inspired a
subsequent generation of scholars, such as their respective students
tienne Balibar and Antonio Negri.12 Warren Montag and Ted Stolzes
edited volume The New Spinoza, also published by the University of
Minnesota Press, offers the best collection of the rich range of views
of this approach.13 We can summarize this approach by saying that it
builds on the encyclopedic scholarship of the previous approach to
present Spinoza as a philosopher of power, that is, as a philosopher
who concentrates on immanence and particularity. In this sense,
Spinoza is mobilized in the move against structures of transcendence
xvi I N TRODUCTI ON
and universalismor what has come to be understood as modernity.

In the past few years, a new direction has started developing that
could predominate in Spinoza studies in the twenty-first century. This
approach assumes the centrality of Spinozas thought in modernity
not merely as a figure who leads to modernity but moreover as a figure
whose thought is modern. Thus Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris
influential critique of modern sovereignty, Empire, is permeated with
Spinozas influence.14 This is also evidenced by its sequel, Multitude,
because the title-terms provenance is Spinozas Political Treatise.15
Even though Spinoza is not referred to continuously in these two
works by Hardt and Negri, still the Spinozan insistence on immanence
is utilized in understanding current issues. There are several other
examples of this approach. For instance, Moira Gatens and Genevieve
Lloyd also use Spinozas philosophy to address philosophical and
political issues of the present in Collective Imaginings.16 In addition,
works in neighboring disciplines, such as Antonio Damasios Looking
for Spinoza, attempt a theoretical approach to neuropsychology based
on Spinozas theory of affects.17 This third direction characteristically
uses Spinoza to think about issues related to the present. Spinozas
thought participates in current debates. Maybe this new approach
is philosophys way of catching up with other practices, such as lit-
erature, which, at least since Alexander Pope and George Eliot, has
seen Spinoza as a source of inspiration.18 There are also important
examples of a Spinozan influence in the arts, notably the Spinoza
Monument by Thomas Hirschhorn (Amsterdam, 1999). There Spinoza
becomes a contemporary, a participant in cultural and intellectual
production, the figure who allows us to think of our modernity.
The encyclopedic approach to Spinoza that started at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century is still valuable today because it provides
a basis for further scholarship. The approach that presents Spinoza
as a philosopher of power and hence aligns him with modernity can
be seen as setting the foundations of the third approach: only after
establishing Spinozas import for postmetaphysical thought would
it have been possible to bring Spinoza to the now. Spinoza Now takes
the challenges faced by this latter approach seriously. It includes as
broad a variety of approaches as possible. All the contributions ac-
tively engage with Spinoza, making his thought relevant today. The
chapters seek to pursue Spinozas thought by thinking with Spinoza.
INTRODUCT ION xvii
The two aspects of the titleSpinozas own emphasis on the now

and the new approach in Spinoza studies emphasizing his present
relevanceshould be seen as interlaced. What characterizes them
both is a dynamic conception of production. For Spinoza, the past
and the future are both productive of, and produced by, the present.
The immutability of the static substance is only a formal principle
to guarantee the infinite unfolding of being and thought. The new
approach to Spinoza reproduces this dual direction of production in
explicating Spinoza. But in so doing, it is also producing a Spinoza
of the now, a Spinoza who participates as a productive force in
cultural formation.
The first four chapters offer different ways of understanding
the reception of Spinozas thought as well as forging new ways
for thought through an understanding of that reception history. In
the opening chapter of the volume, Christopher Norris conducts a
critical overview of the way Spinoza has been received by various
philosophical traditions. Norris starts by observing the great con-
flict in the interpretation of Spinoza, namely, that Spinoza has been
viewed either as a mystic or as an atheist, either as a spiritualist or as
a materialist. Tracing some aspects of this variegated history, Nor-
ris argues that its latest incarnation is the divided interpretation of
Spinoza between analytic and continental philosophers. Something
unites the two approaches, however, namely, the thrust to overcome
dualism, either in its Cartesian or Kantian manifestation. From that
point of view, Spinozan monism emerges as standing beyond the
analyticcontinental dichotomy. Norris does not argue that Spinoza
bridges the gap between the two philosophical schools but rather that
Spinozas metaphysics necessitates a rapprochement between analytic
and continental philosophy that will be mutually beneficial.
Alain Badiou concurs with Christopher Norris about the conflict
of interpretation generated by Spinoza, and especially his Ethics, and
proposes a solution to this problem. Departing from the observation
that even though the Ethics are written more geometricoin a geo-
metrical ordervery little of the literature on Spinoza has actually
paid close attention to this mathematical methodology. Examining
a single propositionEthics I, P28Badiou shows that the way the
proof of the proposition is related to previous propositions, defini-
tions, axioms, and so on, is indispensable in understanding the Ethics.
xviii I NTR ODUCTI ON
The geometrical order creates a web of relations that structure the

Ethics. This mirrors Spinozas insistence in Definition 2, at the very
beginning of the Ethics, that the distinction between the infinite and
the finite is strictly relational. The ratiocination and the order of be-
ing are, therefore, correlated. Spinoza, argues Badiou, propounds a
mathematics of Beingan ontology according to which thinking
or the intellect is action as such.
The implicit targets of Badious argument, according to which
Spinozas theory of relations can only be read in parallel with the
mathematical nature of proofs in the Ethics, are the attempts to read
the theory of relations through the theory of passions. Simon Duffy
discusses the two most prominent exponentsGilles Deleuze and
Pierre Machereyin locating the theory of relations in the third part
of the Ethics. By exploring Deleuzes and Machereys different inter-
pretations of the relation between active or joyful and passive or sad
affections, Duffy shows two ways of constructing a politics departing
from the theory of passions. Duffy concentrates on the elusive joy-
ful passions, which are neither properly active nor purely passive
and therefore forge a relation between joyous and sad affections.
Is there a way of mediating between the mathematical and the
affective approach? Justin Clemenss chapter, in locating the emer-
gence of the political in in-action, and in showing that inaction is
a matter of the mathematics of Being and of affective disposition,
suggests a possible mediation. This chapter presents a genealogy of
the Buridans ass paradox (Ethics II, P49S)the donkey that cannot
decide between two equidistant bales of hay. Clemens argues that
the paradox has two ostensible targets: Descartess separation of will
and understanding and Hobbess exclusion from the covenant with
the sovereign of all those who cannot decide. As such, Buridans ass
shows the tight connections between Spinozas ontology, epistemol-
ogy, and politics. From this perspective, argues Clemens, Buridans
ass demonstrates Spinozas materialism.
All the different approaches explored in the first four chapters
have one thing in common: the insistence that Spinozas ontology is
linked to his politics. This insistence can take another, more special-
ized guise: the link between theologybroadly conceived to include
any notion of universalismand the political. This link is possible
because of the process of interpretationthe biblical exegesis that
INTRODUCT ION xix
Spinoza proposes in the Theologico-Political Treatise or the notion of

expression in the Ethics that Deleuze emphasizes. The four chapters
of Part II deal with this theme.
Like Clemens, Michael Mack also addresses Descartess and
Hobbess influence on Spinoza, but shows how it is possible to eschew
an absolute universalism in favor of an inclusive universalism. Mack
shows that Spinoza is not arguing against religion or theology per
se but rather against the politics of domination to which Cartesian
dualism of necessity leads. The reason for this is that there is a line
connecting theology with teleology and anthropomorphism, which
only leads to the possibility of one group claiming superiority and
domination over another. Mack describes this as a self-destructive or
autoimmune process. This is juxtaposed to the intellectual love of
God from Ethics V, which Mack interprets as instating a communal-
ity, in the sense that it describes a plurality of individual minds, an
affirmation of singularities. Only this communality, argues Mack,
gives us a chance for a nonviolent politics.
Arthur J. Jacobson turns to the Theologico-Political Treatise to
examine the status of prophets. It is well known that for Spinoza,
there are no miracles, and in this sense prophesy is part of natural
knowledge, its distinctive characteristic being that it helps in the
formation of community. Jacobson further complicates this standard
account of Spinozas prophets by pointing out a paradox, namely,
that if prophesy is natural knowledge, then everyone, in principle,
even if not in fact, can be a prophet. This structure, as Jacobson
demonstrates, can also be found in Maimonides. The effect of this
structure in Spinoza is that knowledge, then, is shareable by every-
onethere is a democracy of knowledge.
Warren Montag looks at scripture itself to make a related point
to that raised by Jacobson. Montag points out the correlation be-
tween ontology and politics expressed in God, or Nature from the
Ethics has its equivalent in the Theologico-Political Treatise, in which
Spinoza writes, Scripture, or the mind of the Holy Spirit. This in-
dicates that interpretation is also a partner in ontology and politics.
But this is only possible, as Montag demonstrates, if interpretation
presupposes that any work does not exist prior to its effects. There
is no independent space of reason that remains outside a causality
that includes the imagination and all the faults that characterize the
xx I N TRODUCTI ON
humans mind and actions. This crucial Spinozan insight is missing,

argues Montag, from Jonathan Israels image of Spinoza as the prime
representative of radical Enlightenment that supposedly demysti-
fied knowledge, emptying it of all superstition. Conversely, Montag
shows that scripture is equivalent to the mind of the Holy Spirit
because it is the palimpsest of the interaction, inevitably and invari-
ably at fault, of imagination and reason. Furthermore, if scripture,
like Nature, is perfection, then the Bible is, paradoxically, no longer
an exemplary or singular text but rather the manifestation of inter-
pretations role in the interplay between ontology and politics. To
recall the distinction about the prophets drawn by Arthur Jacobson,
scripture, in principle, has no superiority over any other text; it is
more important than other texts only in fact, through the influence
it exercised in the conceptualization of law and norm.
Like Montag, Cesare Casarino also departs from a close reading,
in this case, a passage that refers to the concatenation of all things
(Ethics I, Ap.). Casarino first points out that Spinoza uses the notion
of concatenation to explicate the argument of the first part of the
Ethics. Such an explication is rare, if not unique, in the Ethics. Casa-
rino shows that this is not accidental. Concatenation is interlinked
with Spinozas understanding of interpretation that requires two
simultaneous procedures: the positing of a totality, on one hand,
and, on the other, the signification and performance of meaning.
This dual aspect is precisely what Deleuze has termed expression or
sense. But there is also a second, political consequence of this move.
Concatenation and the totality it implies present Spinoza as a genuine
theorist of globalizationthe Ethics appears as a response to capital
and its totalizing imperative. According to Casarinos argument, the
explication that signifies and performs its meaning is not commen-
surable with representation in the sense that it activates potentiality
in the process of interpretation: the knowledge of an object is not
subjective but a feature of the object itself. This allows for singularity.
As Marx showed, it is possible to think of the ontological function
of God as absolute immanence. But in Spinoza, that absolute im-
manence is accompanied by the concatenation of all beings, which
retains beings singularity. Thus Spinoza emerges as a theorist of
capital and globalization who comesanachronistically and yet all
the more poignantlyafter Marx.
IN TROD UCT ION xxi
Part III takes up the issues discussed in the previous chapters to

present them in relation to Spinozas relevance for the arts. Such an
unusual approach aims not only to present Spinoza from a novel
perspective that can be illuminating but in addition to demonstrate
that Spinozas thought can be applied to a variety of contexts and
issues of contemporary relevance.
Sebastian Egenhofer also tackles the Marxist legacy of Spinozas
thought, concentrating on how the notion of production is indis-
pensable in understanding the art of the twentieth century. There
is an increasing shift from the imagistic to the economic aspect
of productionfrom Mondrians abstractions, whose process of
material production is secondary, to Judds minimalism, which
makes the material manifestation the focal point, to Ashers works,
operating with and against their own economic genesis. Egenhofer
suggests a next stage indicated by the precarious materiality of
Thomas Hirschhorns Spinoza Monument. Here the two aspects of
production are inseparableor, even more emphatically, they allow
for the conceptualization of this inseparability. The work of art is
both the experience and the thought that structures that experience.
In this way, Hirschhorns work manifests that the Marxian notion
of production unfolds in a Spinozan matrix, as the various ways
in which the infinite can be expressed in its finite modes. In other
words, only when the Spinozan link between ontology and politics
is imbued with the Marxian notion of production can Hirschhorns
originality come to the fore.
Anthony Uhlmann combines issues discussed in earlier chap-
tersthe theory of relations in Badiou and Duffy, the notion of the
necessity of a gap in interpretation in Montag, and the concomitance
of production and its idea in Egenhoferto show that it is possible to
develop a Spinozist understanding of the arts. Departing from Beck-
etts fascination with Spinoza, Uhlmann acknowledges that, at first
blush, the parallelism between thought and experience, the infinite
and finite, or substance and its modes poses a problem for art. But
this is only so if art is under the sway of representation. Spinoza, as
Uhlmann shows, had already moved beyond representation by insist-
ing that the parallelism does not suggest a lack of contact; rather,
infinite knowledge is of necessity related to its finite modesthe
first kind of knowledge is implicated in the third kind of knowledge.
xxii I NTR ODUCTI ON
This theory of relations enacts gaps between its different parts. The
presence of these gaps is also indispensable for the arts. A work of
art does not convey a message; rather, a work of art establishes rela-
tions whose message is the (ethical) imperative to fill the gaps that,
of necessity, persist. This means that, just as in Spinozas relation of
substance and its modes, modern art is both the unfolding of mate-
rial relations and the thinking that accompanies them.
Mieke Bal and Dimitris Vardoulakis explore the relation between
thought and matter from a different perspective, emphasizing the
rupture that makes their relation possible. Spinoza addresses this
by drawing the distinction between essence and existence. As Bal
and Vardoulakis note, this distinction is drawn with recourse to
examples from art. This is not accidental. As an analysis of three
different versions of Rembrandts depiction of Joseph, Potiphar, and
his wife demonstrates, Rembrandts work makes possible a similar
distinction between image and words. The complex interpretations
that arise when the image is denied an immediate meaning echo
Spinozas insistence that there is no immediate connection between
thought and matter, essence and existence. From this perspective,
the link between Rembrandt and Spinoza is not based on the fact
that they were neighbors in Amsterdams Jewish quarter but rather
is based on adopting a similar attitude to the creation of art and
culture. Thus Spinoza emerges not so much as an aesthetician as a
philosopher whose ontology reverberates with an understanding of
the arts precisely because the distinction of essence and existence
allows for creation and production.
The last three chapters provide encounters between Spinoza and
other philosophers. These encounters are not primarily compara-
tive analyses, nor are they merely the impetus for exploring current
philosophical issues; rather all three encounters stage the importance
of the Spinozan ontologys privileging of life over death.
Antonio Negri begins his analysis by pointing out that modern
philosophy is characterized by the Hegelian move to unite essence
and existence. As Bal and Vardoulakis discussed in the previous
chapter, and as Negri emphasizes here again, essence and existence
are never united in Spinoza. Negri further observes that Heideggers
ontological difference rests on the same premise. The disjunction
between essence and existence makes Heidegger and Spinoza both
IN TROD UCT ION xxiii
antimodernist philosophers, yet here the similarities end, for ulti-

mately they construct contradictory, even antithetical, ontologies.
Heidegger proposes an ontology of the void, emphasizing the noth-
ingness of being, which is achieved through the projective aspect of
care, the destiny that subjugates being in being-toward-death. This
is, argues Negri, a totalizing move, whose reactionary political over-
tones are clear to see. Conversely, Spinozas ontology understands
being as plenitude, and instead of an emptiness, there are relations of
power. The result is radically different from Heidegger, Negri insists.
Instead of the totalizing impulse of death, we have in Spinoza the
singularity of life, which articulates itself in love, the construction of
being through affect. This constructive aspect makes the escape from
destiny through freedom possible and, consequently, is a genuinely
democratic impulse.
A. Kiarina Kordela shows that the way that death is conceived
is crucial for Spinozas political stance seen from a psychoanalytic
perspective. For this to come to the fore, argues Kordela, it is im-
portant to avoid two interrelated premises that structure Antonio
Damasios interpretation of Spinoza. These are, first, that Spinoza
performs an inversion of Cartesian dualism by privileging the body
over the mind, and second, that consequently Spinozas is solely a
philosophy of life, one that indicates homeostasis, self-preservation,
and the pleasure principle. Kordela shows that such an inversion of
Cartesianism only leads to a new dualisma dualism that can only
conceive of death as a biological occurrence. As Kordela demon-
strates, however, death is never solely biological for Spinoza. Instead,
as the discussions of suicide evidence, Spinozas conception of
death is indispensable in social and political critique. Thus Spinoza
emerges as having recourse to the death drive alongside the pleasure
principle. This political dimension, then, allows Spinozas ontology
to reverberate with psychoanalysis. Like Negri, Kordela shows that
this dimension emerges in Part V of the Ethics, in the discussion of
the intellectual love of God.
Alexander Garca Dttmann explores the relation between life
and death by staging a dialogue between Spinoza and Derrida.
Dttmann begins his chapter with Spinozas assertion that a free man
fears death least of all. This entails that freedom requires a libera-
tion from the affect of fear and, more generally, liberation from the
xxiv I NTRODUCTI ON
bondage of affectwhich also means the attainment of wisdom.

In Spinozas construal, freedom as an affirmation of life is nothing
other than the acceptance of the laws necessitya freeing oneself
from that necessity even though that necessity persists. Derridas no-
tion of the law is never articulated in terms of necessity but always
in terms of indecision. The absence of certain or adequate criteria
precludes any certainty of the laws validity. Derrida also sides with
life, but here life is understood as the infinite deferral of the law, as
the suspension of its necessity. From that perspective, the Spinozan
position about freedom being the acceptance of the necessity of the
law appears thoroughly incompatible with Derrida. Yet the matter
is not as simple as that. For though Derrida can refute Spinoza on
the grounds that it is merely idealism to impute the liberation over
affectthat is, to tame being or reality by subsuming it to the law of
the substancestill Spinoza can respond that Derridas own asser-
tion of the impossibility of grasping necessity can be conceived as
a law in itself, as the ultimate affirmation of necessity. Despite their
differences, their mutual affirmation of life makes it at least possible
for them to say that they understand each other.
Janouch mentions the following comment that Franz Kaf ka made

to him:
Accident is the name one gives to the coincidence of events, of

which one does not know the causation. But there is no world
without causation. Therefore in the world there are no accidents,
but only here ... Kaf ka touched his forehead with his left hand.
Accidents only exist in our heads, in our limited perceptions. They
are the reflection of the limits of our knowledge. The struggle
against chance is always a struggle against ourselves, which we
can never entirely win.19
Kaf ka unwittingly expresses himself as a true Spinozist here. There

is, on one hand, an unshakeable necessity. However, on the other
hand, that necessity is not subject to a law, or at least to a law
that can be discovered. This necessity persists despite usand yet,
simultaneously, it can exist only because of us, because of our
struggles to bridge the gap that separates us from that necessity.
IN TRODUCT ION xxv
The insistence on the now in Spinozas philosophy is about this gap

and this struggle. Their effects are so deep that they bring disparate
categories into contact, from ontology to politics and from ethics
to aesthetics. What has to be remembered, however, is that the gap
can never be filled, the struggle can never completely succeed or,
in Kaf kas words, we can never entirely win. This must apply to
Spinoza himself. Thus Spinoza now is not so much a statement
about a truth that Spinozas writings can reveal to us in our present
situation; rather, it is the injunction to adhere to the attitude that
affirms both necessity and its impossibility. It is hoped that this will
lead to an engaged thought that strives to rediscover that struggle
in the past and to ensure that it continues in the future.
Notes
1 Baruch Spinoza, Political Treatise, in Complete Works, trans. Samuel
Shirley, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 1, 5.
2 Given that Spinozas biographical details are well known, I will
mention here only the nodal points. Spinozas family had emigrated
to Amsterdam, the most liberal city of its time, from the Iberian
Peninsula owing to the persecution of Jews. He was born there
in 1632. Spinozas life changed dramatically when he was excom-
municated in 1656 and was forced to leave the Jewish community
of Amsterdam. Nobody knows the exact reason for the excom-
munication, but it is certainly related to Spinozas free thinking
and his study of philosophy. These endeavors led to the publication
of Spinozas first book, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, in 1663.
By then, Spinoza was leading a relatively quiet and solitary life, al-
though he had faithful disciples or admirers in the Netherlands and
was in correspondence with the best minds of his time in Europe,
including Leibniz. Responding to contemporary political events,
Spinoza stopped writing his magnum opus, the Ethics, to compose
the Theologico-Political Treatise, which was published anonymously
in 1670. The reaction was ferocious, and it meant that Spinoza
was not confident enough to publish anything else in his lifetime.
After his death in 1677, his friends collected and published his writ-
ings, including the Ethics, his unfinished Political Treatise, and his
xxvi I NTR ODUCTI ON
correspondence. The best biography of Spinoza is Steven Nadlers

Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
3 The best overview of Spinozas reception up to the beginning of the
twentieth century is Pierre-Franois Moreaus Spinozas Reception
and Influence, in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Gar-
rett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 40833. I refer
the interested reader to Moreaus essay for a more detailed overview.
4 Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant
to Fichte (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 60.
See also Beth Lord, Kant and Spinozism (London: Palgrave, 2011).
5 See Anthony J. La Vopa, Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy,
17621799 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
6 For the complex relation between Spinoza and Hegel, see Pierre
Machereys classic Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris: Maspero, 1979); published
in English as Hegel or Spinoza, trans. Susan M. Ruddick (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
7 Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the
Latent Process of His Reasoning, 2 vols. (New York: Schocken, 1969
[1934]).
8 Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
9 The first volume of Guroults book Spinoza was titled Spinoza I:
Dieu, and the second was titled Spinoza II: Lme; they were pub-
lished in 1968 and 1974, respectively. A third volume that was going
to treat Parts IIIV of the Ethics was barely started at the time of
Guroults death.
10 Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinozas
Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988).
11 Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin
Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1992).
12 See tienne Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, trans. Peter Snowdon
(London: Verso, 1998), and Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly:
The Power of Spinozas Metaphysics and Politics, trans. Michael Hardt
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
13 Warren Montag and Ted Stolze, eds., The New Spinoza (Minneapolis:
14 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2000).
INTRODUCT ION xxvii
15 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy

in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004).
16 Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd, Collective Imaginings: Spinoza,
Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1999).
17 Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling
Brain (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2003).
18 George Eliot even translated the Ethics. See Benedict de Spinoza,
Ethics, trans. George Eliot, ed. Thomas Deegan (Salzburg, Austria:
Institut fr Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universitt Salzburg, 1981).
See also Isaac Bashevis Singers remarkable short story Spinoza
in the Market Street, in The Spinoza of Market Street and Other
Stories, 725 (New York: Bard Books, 1970). Another more recent
but fascinating example is Norma Coles poetry collection Spinoza
in Her Youth (Richmond, Calif.: Omnidawn, 2002).
19 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kaf ka: Notes and Reminiscences,
trans. Gononwy Rees, with an introduction by Max Brod (London:
Derek Verschoyle, 1953), 55.
part i
Strategies for
Reading Spinoza
1
Spinoza and the Conict
of Interpretations
christopher norris
if there has always been a new Spinoza, this is no doubt because

his thinking so strongly resists assimilation on any of the terms laid
down by every mainstream school of European philosophy from
Descartes to the present. Thus his work has very often been taken
up by radicals or dissidentsthose who approach it with a view to
transforming the discourse of ontology, metaphysics, epistemology,
ethics, politics, or aestheticswhile always leaving something unac-
counted for, or something that is consequently thought to require a
likewise radical critique.1 This pattern of response goes a long way
backhistorically as well as philosophically speakingto the earli-
est stages of Spinozas reception, when his writings became a chief
zone of engagement in the struggle for freedom of conscience and
belief or for emancipation from the dictates of religious (whether
Christian or Jewish) orthodoxy.2 Later on, it assumed the same kind
of salience for the quarrel between idealism and materialism or
at its most extremebetween the romantic (German and English)
idea of Spinoza as a God-intoxicated mystic and his underground
reputation as an out-and-out determinist, materialist, and atheist.3
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this reception-history
was that both parties to each dispute could cite chapter and verse
from Spinozas texts and moreover buttress their respective readings
with a good show of exegetical care and argumentative rigor. It is the
same with those recent or present-day schools of Spinoza interpreta-
tion that are often sharply at odds with each other on basic points
3
4 CH R I STOPHE R NOR RIS
of method, doctrine, and principle yet that likewise manage to put

up a strong textual-documentary as well as philosophical case. Thus,
for instance, thinkers such as Althusser and Balibarstructural
Marxists, as the label wentcould very plausibly appeal to Spinoza
by way of support for their rationalist account of the relationship
between lived experience, ideology, and the process of scientific
concept formation,4 while others, like Gilles Deleuze, could just as
plausibly invoke him as the chief source or elective precursor for
a kind of radical process metaphysics grounded in the notions of
desiring-production and molecular or deterritorialized energy flows.5
More than that, the impact of his work was clearly visible across a
swathe of developments in hermeneutics, critical theory, and the
human and social sciences, where Spinozas philosophicohistorical
critique of revelation and scriptural warrant was among the most
crucial early contributions to the project of secular Enlightenment
thought.6
Some years ago, I wrote a book about Spinoza that put the
case for his pervasive yet underacknowledged influence and tried
to sort out some of these multiple, often closely intersecting, yet
sometimes wildly divergent lines of intellectual descent.7 In particu-
lar, I traced the conflict of interpretations that started out with his
double role as archheretic or vilified atheist, on one hand, and on
the other, purveyor of a knowledgea mystical-intuitive mode of
comprehensionbeyond all the limits and endemic shortcomings
of plain-prose reason. This conflict has been repeated in various
displaced or surrogate forms over the past three centuries of often
intense and heated debate around Spinozas thought. Nowadays it
appears in the clash of priorities between those in the analytic camp,
who regard him as having some useful (if often misleadingly for-
mulated) things to say about issues in metaphysics, epistemology, or
philosophy of mind,8 and those of a so-called Continental persuasion,
who tend more often to emphasize Spinozas politics or what they
see as the basically political nature of Spinozist ethics, ontology, and
psychology.9 Even so, this fails to capture the full complexity of the
situation because there is something in commonphilosophically if
not politically speakingbetween the analytic drive for conceptual
clarity and precision and Althussers claim for Spinoza (in company
with Marx) as having achieved a decisive epistemological break with
SPINOZA AND THE CONFLICT OF INTERPRETATIONS 5
the currency of commonsense or ideological belief.10 Indeed, the

very fact of his having spawned so diverse and complex a reception-
history is one measure of Spinozas extreme singularity and his way
of holding out against classification according to such ready-made
categories. French thinkers in the wake of structuralism, Deleuze
especially, have on the whole been more concerned to emphasize
this aspect of Spinozas thought as a part of their campaign against
the grip of conceptual abstraction or totalizing systems of what-
ever kind, not least Althusserian Marxism.11 However, it has also left
a strong impression among his analytical commentators through
their sense of his standing quite apart fromand posing a sizeable
challenge tosome of the most rooted assumptions of mainstream
philosophic thought.
Thus, for all their marked, even drastic differences of interest, idi-
om, and dominant agenda, the two traditions are, at any rate, largely
agreed in their perception of Spinoza as a thoroughly anomalous and
(to say the least) provocative thinker. Though to some, this has been
cause for unqualified celebrationin particular those, like Deleuze,
who enlist him on the side of radical difference or heterogeneityin
others, it has provoked a very mixed response and sometimes taxed
their exegetical patience to the limit and beyond. Here I am thinking
chiefly of Jonathan Bennetts approach, in the mode of Russell-style
rational reconstruction, whereby he offers a patient, detailed, and
often admiring account of Spinozas Ethics until he gets to the third
kind of knowledgescientia intuitivaachieved through the intel-
lectual love of God, at which point, all this patience suddenly runs
out and his commentary gives voice to a sense of bafflement and
downright exasperation.12 Thus, picking out a phrase from the more
indulgent Stuart Hampshire, I contend that instead of implying that
Spinoza has brought us beyond the limits of literal understanding
and that this is acceptable because it is inherent in his chosen topic,
we should say openly that Spinoza is talking nonsense and that there
is no reason to put up with it.13 As for Frederick Pollock and his
claim that these passages are among the most brilliant endeavors of
speculative philosophy, and moreover, that they throw a kind of
poetical glow over the formality of [Spinozas] exposition, Bennett
is quite unable to contain his indignation. Thus, when a commenta-
tor as shrewd as Pollock is reduced to such babbling by his desire to
praise the final stretch of the Ethics, that is further evidence that this
material is worthless. Worse, it is dangerous: it is rubbish that causes
others to write rubbish.14 Still, as I say, even these sharply conflicting
valuations bear witness to the sheer singularity of Spinozas thought
and its power to solicit uncommonly intense and deeply felt modes
of response, whether as an unprecedented challenge or a scandal to
received ideas. In this context, we might recall Derridas etymologi-
cally pointed use of solicit (from the Latin solicitare) with the sense
of challenging and summoning forth but also of shaking to the very
foundations.15 What unites these otherwise disparate approaches is
their willingnessalbeit very often within certain clearly marked
limitsto accept the possibility of a thinking at odds with those
dominant conceptions that have shaped the self-image of reputable
philosophic discourse.
If commentators once joined battle over the issue of Spinoza as
atheist and radical materialist versus Spinoza as nature-mystic and
proto-Wordsworthian pantheist, they now more often take sides
over matters of ontology, epistemology, or philosophy of mind
and language. Or again, they divide with respect to the question of
whether these are indeed (as analytic philosophers would have it)
the core issues in Spinozas thought or whetheron the dominant
Continental viewthey must ultimately take second place to his
ethicopolitical concerns. Thus, as things stand at present, it is hard
to imagine (say) followers of Althusser, Balibar, or Deleuze entering
into some kind of constructive dialogue with philosophers whose
main points of reference are the commentaries offered by analytic
thinkers like Bennett, Donald Davidson, or Alan Donagan.16 Yet, in
truth, the Spinoza who emerges through Althussers structuralist
Marxist reading bears a closer resemblance to Bennetts Spinozathe
rationalist thinker of adequate ideas as opposed to the delusions of
imaginary commonsense beliefthan to anything that finds room
in Deleuzes (for want of any better description) radicalempiricist
account. And again, despite obvious differences of idiom, what
Deleuze has to say about Spinozas doctrine of the affects and his
notion of conatus as the inbuilt drive toward self-preservation and
fulfillment on the part of every living organism finds a close parallel
in readings from a very different quarter that likewise place chief
emphasis on his treatment of the positive and negative emotions
as the basis for any rational account of knowledge as conducive

to human well-being. Among the latter can be counted Antonio
Damasios recent book, which comes at these issuesthat is to say,
questions concerning the relationship between cognitive and pas-
sional components of the human psychefrom a neurophysical
and cognitivepsychological angle but which nonetheless adopts a
broadly analytic rather than Continental approach.17 My point is that
Spinozas thinking resists any adequate classification in terms of the
standard, textbook account of how philosophy has developed over
the past four centuries. For if Spinoza is undoubtedly a full-fledged
rationalist who maintains that true wisdom can only be achieved
through a reasoned critique of commonsense notions or intuitive,
self-evident ideas, then he is just as much a radical empiricist (more
aptly, a radical naturalist and materialist), according to whom such
wisdom consists in a due recognition of the various physical, causal,
and sociopolitical factors that bear on human knowers in their quest
for more adequate self-understanding.
Of course, the mere fact that he cannot be placed on either side
of these deep-laid philosophic rifts doesnt mean that he manages to
bridge them effectively or achieve the ultimate reconciliation between
subject and object, mind and world, reasons and causes, or free will
and determinism that has eluded philosophers from Descartes down
and continues to preoccupy analytic and Continental thinkers alike.
However, it does provide a telling reminder of just how anomalous
a figure Spinoza must appear by the light of any orthodox histo-
riography or any attempt to assimilate his thought to this or that
certified line of descent. Where responses do tend to divide in fairly
predictable ways is by reacting to the scandal that Spinoza represents
either in downright celebratory termsas a salutary challenge to
the norms and pieties of orthodox philosophic thoughtor with
various degrees of suspicion, mistrust, or hostility. Thus Bennett,
as we have seen, has a high opinion of the Ethics just so long as it
remains on analytically respectable ground, that is, just so long as
Spinoza is concerned with the corrective capacity of adequate ideas
when applied to the various confusions thrown up by the realm
of sensory appearances or ideas of imagination. However, this at-
titude switches very sharply to one of disappointment or shocked
incredulity when Spinoza moves on, in Part V, to expounding the
third kind of knowledge, that which involves a direct apprehension

of the nature or essence of things somehow conceived as present
to thought without any form of conceptual mediation. Such claims
can only strike Bennett as amounting to a quasi-mystical doctrine
whereby the mind is taken to possess something very much like the
power of intellectual intuition that Kant likewise denounced, that
is, a capacity to pass beyond the realm of phenomenal appearances
where sense data are brought under adequate concepts and thus lay
claim to an immediate knowledge of ultimate, noumenal reality.18
Yet it is hard to see the point of any rational reconstruction in
the analytic mode that adopts so partial or selective a view of those
elements in Spinozas thought that are deemed to merit serious
attention by present-day analytic standards. For what drops out of
sight in this process is also what constitutes the singular challenge of
a thinking that runs directly counter to the whole tradition of epis-
temological enquiry that began with Descartes, found its systematic
high point in Kant, and is still very much a part of the present-day
analytic agenda. That is to say, it is the radically monistic approach
that typifies not only Spinozas claims with regard to scientia intuitiva
but also his entire conception of knowledge or, more precisely, his
entire ontology of mind and nature conceived as twin aspects or
attributes of a single, indivisible substance.
It seems to me that analytic philosophy has long been striving
to escape or overcome this Kantian legacy while in fact coming up
with nothing more than a series of minor variations on it.19 Spinoza
alone, among the great thinkers of philosophical modernity, goes so
far in his rejection of the dualist epistemological paradigm and his
embrace of a radically monist ontological alternative as to provoke
bewilderment not only among his goodwilled exegetes but also
among those analytic types who are themselves in quest of some such
(albeit less radical) alternative. As I have said, this contrasts with the
positive, even celebratory response to Spinozas thinking in the recent
Continentalmostly Frenchreception-history where he has been
recruited to a range of philosophical causes whose main (in some
cases sole) point of contact is the link they propose between issues
of ontology and issues of an ethical or sociopolitical nature.20
Not that this dimension is altogether ignored by analytic com-
mentators, forming, as it does, a crucial component of Spinozas
case for the role of philosophy in achieving a clearer, more distinct

idea of the various factors (causal and social) that operate either to
expand or to contract our scope for the exercise of human creative
and emancipatory powers.21 They have also shown some interest in
pursuing the relation between Spinozas more formal or logically
articulated procedures of argument in the Ethics and the kinds of
concern that animate those other portions of that work in which
he discusses the affective or passional aspects of human knowledge
and experience, along with more overtly engag writings such as the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.22 After all, any serious attempt to make
sense of Spinozas project as a whole will have to find some plausible
way of explaining how the exercise of reason may contribute to a
better, more enlightened understanding of the factors that make for
psychological, social, and political well-being through a wise accep-
tance of our place in the natural order of things. More than that, it
will have to offer an account of this process that ties in convincingly
with Spinozas critique of religious revelation and his arguments
concerning the complex background of historical and cultural con-
ditions that alone provide an adequate contextual basis for reading
the scriptures in a critically informed and nondogmatic way.
So of course, the broadly analytic reception has included some
work on this aspect of Spinozas thought and on relevant details of his
own sociopolitical background as one much involved in the various
debatesas well as the frontline struggles for power and influence
within the Dutch Republic of his time.23 However, it has not shown
anything like the commitment of thinkers like Althusser, Balibar,
Deleuze, or (most strikingly) Antonio Negri to produce a reading
of the new Spinoza that brings these multiple aspects together in a
strictly inseparable fusion of politics, life-history, and work.24 What
unites these various Continental approachesdespite their other-
wise large divergences of aimis a shared conviction that Spinozas
thought cannot be understood except through a reading that takes
due account of both its immanent (purely philosophical) modes of
argument and its close imbrication with the various historical, social,
and political events that made up its formative background. That is,
they start out by rejecting the analytic principle that requires a clear
distinction between context of discovery and context of justification,
or the kind of strictly second-order research that has to do with
10 CHR I STOPHE R NOR RIS
matters of culturalhistorical or psychobiographical interest and the

kind of first-order investigation that pertains to the assessment of
philosophic claims in accordance with distinctly philosophical criteria
of truth and validity.25 For an echt-analytic commentator like Bennett,
this distinction is so very basicso definitive of what properly counts
as philosophy rather than intellectual or cultural historythat the
worth of Spinozas intellectual achievement is to be judged solely
with reference to the context of justification, which for him means in
keeping with present-best ideas of conceptual rigor and precision.26
For others of a broadly similar but somewhat less hard-line analytic
persuasion (among them Alan Donagan), the distinction holds in
matters of conceptual exegesis or strictly philosophical content but
doesnt prevent such extraneous interests from making some (albeit
very limited) contribution to our better understanding of Spinozas
thought.27 However, this allowance doesnt go so far as to invoke a
contingent, that is, historical, geographically specific, and sociopoliti-
cally emergent context for his central philosophic concerns, that is
to say, his monist ontology and metaphysics, along with whatever
implications they might hold for current debates in epistemology,
philosophy of mind, or cognitive psychology.
Nor is it surprising that this should be the case, given both the
analytic premise that issues in philosophy cannot be reduced to
second-order questions of history, politics, or psychobiography and
alsoreinforcing that belief among his analytic commentators
Spinozas commitment to the idea of philosophy as aimed toward
an order of truth transcending any mere particularities of time and
place. Yet, of course, there is another whole dimension of Spinozas
thought that is inescapably rooted in the social conditions and political
events of his time and that cannot be understood without reference
to those same conditions and events.28 Moreover, it is one that touches
so directly on his chief metaphysical concernsespecially the issue
of free will versus determinism that lies at their very heartthat any
attempt to apply the two-contexts principle and distinguish clearly
between life and work is sure to end up by offering a highly partial,
not to say distorted, view of those concerns. This is where his Con-
tinental readers have an edge because they reject that principleat
least in its more doctrinaire formand make a point of relating life to
work not just as a matter of more-or-less relevant psychobiographical
or sociohistorical background but as offering the only adequate

means to grasp what is most distinctive and uniquely challenging
about Spinozas project. For it is a main part of that project to explain
how we can think of human beings both as belonging to an order
of causal necessity that allows no appeal to some imaginary realm
of purely autonomous agency or choice and yet as possessing the
capacity to transform passive into active modes of experience. This
capacity comes aboutso he maintainsthrough the achievement
of adequate ideas, which in turn make possible some measure of
freedom from the realm of unknown and hence blindly operative
causal forces.
Of course, this way of putting Spinozas caselike his own
formulations in the Ethics and elsewhereis very far from resolving
the free willdeterminism issue and might well be seen as merely
restating it in a sharpened or more intransigent form. Yet it is the
merit of readings like those of Balibar, Deleuze, Macherey, and Negri
to insist that he alone among the great thinkers of early philosophi-
cal modernity faced up to that issue without taking refugelike
Descartes before and Kant after himin a dualist metaphysics of
subject and object, mind and body, or a noumenal domain wherein
reason gives the rule for its own autonomous exercise and a phe-
nomenal realm wherein everything is subject to the dictates of causal
necessity. Moreover, they do so most often with specific reference
to that complex background of historical, political, religious, and
sociocultural events that exerted such a crucial formative influence
on Spinozas thinking about issues of free will and determinism. Of
course, this may be said to beg the question yet again because, after
all, there is a prima facie contradictionor at any rate, a sharp clash
of prioritiesbetween the claim for Spinoza as one who possessed a
sufficient degree of intellectual autonomy to think the issues through
in a novel, creative, and independent-minded way and the claim that
his ideas were crucially affected by the distinctive pressures and specific
challenges of the time. Indeed, these commentators might be seen
as going out of their way to emphasize the problem and ensure that
Spinozas readers have to face it fair and square rather than seeking a
convenient escape route or evasive compromise solution that would
purport to bring him out as a moderate determinist and upholder of
free will in some likewise moderate, qualified, or compatibilist form.
12 CH RI STOPHE R NOR RIS
Thus the main thrust of interpretations like those mentioned

earlier is to insistcontra such face-saving or emollient accounts
that Spinozas was an outlook radically opposed to any notion that
the problem might be assuaged by adopting a sensible line of least
resistance midway between those strictly unthinkable extremes. For
instance, they stress that he took time off from composing the Ethics
and before proceeding to those parts of Part V in which, if anywhere,
his doctrine of freedom might attain its definitive statement to write
the Tractactus Theologico-Politicus as an urgent and topical contribu-
tion to debates about politics, religion, and the future of the Dutch
Republic.29 That work was primarily concerned with explaining how
the supposed timeless truths of scriptural revelation should rather
be understood as products of their own historical, cultural, and so-
ciopolitical locale, along with the motives of those various, far-from-
disinterested parties who first wrote them down and then engaged
in the process of editing, transmission, and selective deployment to
overt or covert manipulative ends. That is to say, the Tractatus was a
thoroughgoing exercise in the mode of materialist, causal-explanatory,
sociodiagnostic, protosecular, and demythologizing critique that
would emerge to full view only after another two centuries of largely
underground, since often forcefully repressed or persecuted, life.30 Of
course, one reason for this, quite apart from its explosive theologi-
copolitical content, was the fact that Spinoza here seemed to adopt
a thoroughly determinist approach that purported to demonstrate
the false and illusory character not only of religious truth-claims but
also of our cherished, theologically sanctioned self-image as believ-
ers whose faithor lack of itcould properly be ascribed to our
own God-given capacity for autonomous belief formation. What
the Tractatus drives home to painful effect for anyone who wishes
to retain such faith is both the logical impossibility of squaring this
latter pair of requirements and the extent to which that entire belief
system, along with its various doctrinal, scriptural, and institutional
props, can be seen to rest on a basis of merely contingent historical
events. Thus it leaves no room for such imaginary ideas as those of
revelation, divine intervention, or miracles, all of which Spinoza
treats (like Hume after him) as resulting from a mixture in various
proportion of natural, historical, and psychological causes joined to
the effects of ignorance, fear, and predisposed or passive credulity.
In short, as these commentators acknowledge, the free will

determinism issue is by no means resolved or quietly laid aside but is
in some ways rendered all the more intractable by Spinozas decision
to interrupt work on the Ethics and devote several years of intensive
research under often very difficult personal and social circumstances
to composing the Tractatus. Their point, like his, is to wean us away
from any idea that thinking might achieve a genuineas distinct from
merely notionalmargin of autonomy or freedom by claiming to
rise above the conditions of its physical or causally constrained, as
well as its historically situated, time and place. Yet their commentar-
ies would surely miss something crucial if they didnt all the same
make allowance for the strong countervailing tendency in Spinozas
thought, that is, his commitment to a doctrine of adequate ideas that
affirms the power of intellect to criticize false beliefs and pass beyond
them to a knowledge no longer in the grip of illusory common sense
or ideological notions. This is what lends a degree of credibility to
the sorts of analytical approach, like Bennetts, that pretty much
ignore any background matters of historical, cultural, or sociopo-
litical context, or again, the attitude summed up by Donagan when
he remarks that generally [Spinozas] life was of a piece with what
he wrote: discoveries about its detailsapart from facts about his
intellectual exchangesbear dubiously on disputed questions about
what he thought.31 It is also the aspect of his thinking that most
captivated Althusser and the early Macherey when they recruited
certain pregnant formulations from Spinoza as a prime exhibit in
their structuralistMarxist case against Hegelian, Lukacsian, or other
such expressive ways of figuring the link between socioeconomic
base and politicocultural superstructure.32 Rather we should try to
conceive it as a complex, decentered, and overdetermined mode of
relationship wherein there exist certain structures in dominance
but wherein economic forces should be taken to predominate only
in the last instance, or just insofar as they are assigned that role
by the entire existing conjuncture.
This is not the place for anything like a critical exposition of Althus-
serian Marxism. It is sufficient to sayin the present contextthat
Spinozas influence is often plain to see in its emphasis on structural
(as opposed to expressive or totalizing) modes of explanation and
on the crucial role of philosophy as a form of theoretical practice
aimed toward resisting or breaking the hold of intuitive, self-evident,

or commonsense (i.e., ideological) beliefs. Thus, according to Al-
thusser and Balibar,
effects are not outside the structure, are not a pre-existing object,
element, or space in which the structure arrives to imprint its
mark; on the contrary, the structure is immanent in its effects, a
cause immanent in its effects in the Spinozist sense of the term,
that the whole existence of the structure consists in its effects, in short
that the structure which is merely a specific combination of its
peculiar elements, is nothing outside its effects.33
Moreover, Spinoza should also take credit for having pioneered the
mode of critical or symptomatic reading that enabled commentary
to go beyond its traditional, fideist attitude in matters of textual
(especially scriptural) warrant and thereby reveal those moments of
unresolved aporia, strain, or contradiction that signaled the effect
of some repressed yet disruptive ideological content. Clearly what
Althusser and Balibar have in mind is the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
and its precocious combination of textual exegesis with a range of
approacheshermeneutic, source-critical, historical-reconstructive,
cultural-materialist in no very stretched sense of the termthat
would have to wait a good two centuries before they were taken up
and developed. Hence their very striking claim in Reading Capital:
The first man ever to have posed the problem of reading, and in
consequence, of writing, was Spinoza, and he was also the first
to have proposed both a theory of history and a philosophy of
the opacity of the immediate. With him, for the first time ever,
a man linked together in this way the essence of reading and
the essence of history in a theory of the difference between the
imaginary and the true.34
So there is another side to the recent reception-history, one that has

more to do with adequate ideas and with the power of thought to
criticize and thereby transcend its own formative context or back-
ground conditions than with the need to recall theory to a sense of
its own inescapable enmeshment in those same conditions.
However, it is worth recalling once again how urgent were the

social and political circumstances that bore on Spinoza when his
main concernand a chief motive for writing the Tractatuswas to
stave off the threat of religious dogmatism and the warring factions
whose claim to exclusive possession of scriptural truth looked set to
destroy the Dutch Republic. Nor is the Ethics by any means free of
such turbulence, sinceas must strike the attentive readerthere is
a notable contrast between the order of numbered axioms, proposi-
tions, and corollaries with their appearance of impassive, (quasi-)
geometrical precision and the various interpolated scholia in which
Spinoza finds room for some powerful expressions of positive and
negative affect. This is why, as Deleuze puts it, there is need for
a double reading of Spinoza: on the one hand, a systematic read-

ing in pursuit of the general idea and the meaning of the parts,
but on the other hand and at the same time, the affective reading,
without an idea of the whole, where one is carried along or set
down, put in motion or at rest, shaken or calmed, according to
the velocity of this or that part.35
Thus it was always very much on the cards that the high theoreticist
moment epitomized by Althusserian Marxism would at length
give way to a reactive trendin Spinoza scholarship and also in
the wider context of post-1980 French philosophical debatethat
mounted a vigorous challenge to it. That challenge took shape among
thinkers like Deleuze in the name of difference, intensity, desiring-
production, molecular versus molar forces, deterritorializing
lines of flight versus reterritorializing modes of control, and other
such attempts to evoke or connote what lay intrinsically beyond the
grasp of adequate conceptualization.36 Along with this went a drasti-
cally changed estimate of Spinozas significance, one that located the
potentially transformative and liberating power of his thought not
so much in the process of conceptual critique, whereby confused or
imaginary ideas yielded place to their clear or adequate counterparts,
but rather in those passages from the Ethics that affirmed the priority
of positive over negative or joyous over sad affects and emotions. Thus
the image of Spinoza that predominates in Althussers workthat of
an elective precursor to Marx who somehow manages to construct
(or discover) in advance the main theoretical apparatus of Marxist

Ideologiekritiknow yields place to the image of one who adopted
a simulacrum of rationalist method to impart a certain order to his
otherwise unmanageably prolix and tumultuous thoughts.37 What
is so remarkable is that both these conflicting accounts find warrant
not only in a few, carefully selected passages from Spinoza but on
the basis of readings that adduce large amounts of highly relevant
textual evidence, and that do so moreover with consistent and well-
defined interpretative ends in view.
I should perhaps make it clear that I am not for one moment
presenting Spinoza as some kind of textual Rorschach blot into
whom various parties can reador onto whom they can readily proj-
ectwhatever meanings or messages they choose. On the contrary,
as I have said, these variant readings each have a claim to exegetical
rigor and fidelity that redeems them from any such charge. More to
the point is Derridas remark that certain thinkersmaybe all great
thinkers, or those who have given rise to a significant reception-
historytend to generate sharply opposed interpretations that
cannot be reconciled or subject to settlement one way or the other
because they can both cite chapter and verse in their own support
and can both very plausibly assert their credentials as the authorized
version.38 Very often, these debates fall out between left and right
lines of intellectual descent, as can be seen in different waysso
Derrida observeswith philosophers from Aristotle to Kant, Hegel,
Nietzsche, and (not least) Marx. He also provides a useful metaphor
by which to think about this curious feature of intellectual history,
namely, that of the tape-recording machine with multiple playback
heads, such that any given segment of tape (or passage of text) may
be decoded in different ways yet without this necessarily entailing
any dropouts or distortions (interpretative oversights, errors, or
symptoms of gross ideological bias).
Thus philosophers and literary theorists tend to distort the issue
by constructing a false tertium non datur, that is, by supposing it to
fall out between defenders of a strict intentionalist or single-right-
reading position and those who adopt an attitude of anything goes
or total hermeneutic license. However, this is merely to sidetrack
attention from the more challenging question as to just what it is
about certain passages in certain authors that somehow gives rise
to such instances of deep-laid scholarlycritical dispute, given that

there do exist certain constraints on the range of admissible read-
ings. For if one thing is clear from Derridas work on thinkers from
Plato and Aristotle to Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, and J.L.
Austin, it is that (as he puts it) interpretation cannot develop in just
any direction at all or authorize itself to say almost anything but
rather requires all the instruments of traditional criticismof phi-
lology, textual scholarship, and a due regard for authorial intentas
an indispensable guardrail in the process of critical exegesis.39 On
the other handcruciallythis guardrail has only ever protected, it
has never opened a reading, so that criticism has to go beyond the
effaced and respectful doubling of commentary to reveal how the
writer writes in a language and in a logic whose proper system, laws,
and life his discourse cannot dominate absolutely. And again, the
reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the
writer, between what he commands and what he does not command
of the patterns of the language that he uses.40
It is Nietzsche who provides one of Derridas most striking
examples since in no other case have the divergent left and right
interpretations run to such extremes and been able to cite such a
range of good (or, at any rate, highly plausible) warrant in the text.
But there is also a sense in which Nietzsche lends himself too easily
to Derridas purpose because his writings contain such a mass of
provocative, willfully extreme, and often downright contradictory
remarks assembled with such scant regard for all the normal (to his
way of thinking, inertly conformist) protocols of rational discourse.
Spinoza offers a more interesting test case insofar as his thinking
manifests a high degree of logical consistency, even if his style of
reasoning more geometrico in the Ethics is apt to make it seem more
rigorously argued and tightly structured than it is. So where left and
right Nietzscheans can always point to different, often conflicting
passages in the text that provide support for their likewise diver-
gent interpretations, it is not so easy to explain how Spinoza could
have spawned such a multifarious reception-history. This challenge
becomes yet more acute when one considers that his was the most
resolutely monist and henceone might expectmost unambiguous,
clearly stated, and multiple-reading-proof philosophic system to have
appeared in Western philosophy since the great monists of antiquity
such as (at opposite extremes) a metaphysician such as Parmenides

and radical materialists such as Democritus or Epicurus. And yet, as
I have said, it is the utterly unqualified or uncompromising charac-
ter of Spinozas monist ontology that has given rise to this likewise
extreme pattern of contrasting interpretations. Thus his reputation
has always been a battleground between those who considered him
a pantheist, a mystic, a well-nigh saintly figure, or (in the famous
words of Novalis) a God-intoxicated thinker and, on the other
hand, thoseincluding the vast majority of his contemporaries
who deemed him an out-and-out materialist, atheist, and wicked
subverter of every last moral value.
Of course, the terms of this controversy have changed, and one
is nowadays unlikely to find Spinoza either praised or vilified for any
such reasons. All the same, it is not too hard to discern the legacy of
those old battles in the more restrained and philosophically specialized
yet nonetheless sharp divergences of view that continue to attend his
present-day reception-history. For there is just as great a difference
between, say, Althussers high-structuralist or rationalist reading and
Deleuzes take on the prophet of unbridled desiring-production as
any that arose in his own time or during the subsequent two centuries
when Spinozism was a watchwordand a dangerous charge to bring
or to facein various philosophical, theological, and sociopolitical
disputes. Or again, there is just as much at stake in doctrinal terms
between those who take Spinoza to be offering intimations of a new
and radically distinct mode of cognition in Part V of the Ethics (where
he talks about the third kind of knowledge, or scientia intuitiva)
and those, like Bennett, who come at it from a strongly analytic or
rational-reconstructive angle and who tend to throw up their hands
in despair at just this point.41 What unites them, all the same, is a
strong sense that Spinoza is venturing into strange seas of thought
where established philosophical distinctions break down, among
them most obviously those between mind and body, subject and
object, or self and world. Hence, no doubt, his renewed appeal to
philosophers of otherwise diverse persuasion who see in Spinozas
radical monismor something very like itthe hope of achieving
a clean, conceptually unencumbered break with the whole bad
legacy of Cartesian dualism and its various, for example, Kantian and
present-day (whether analytic or Continental) successor movements.
Thus Donald Davidson cites Spinoza as the one early-modern

philosopher who managed to think his way through and beyond
the Cartesian impasse and who thereby prefigured the current turn
toward a thoroughly naturalized or nonmetaphysical yet also (just as
crucially) nonreductionist account of the mindbody relationship.42
What Davidson puts forward, briefly stated, is a theory of anoma-
lous monism that seeks to maintain the following principles: (1)
that for any mental event, there is a corresponding physical (brain)
event in the absence of which the mental event would not have oc-
curred; (2) that this correlation, though strict, is non-law-governed or
anomalous since it is construed as holding only between event-tokens
rather than event-types; and (3) that although the mental supervenes
on the physical, there is no prospect of reducing the former to the
latterof pushing right through with any radical behaviorist, elimi-
nativist, or central-state-materialist programbecause they involve
altogether different descriptive or conceptual registers. Where the
one requires a discourse (like those of neurophysiology or cogni-
tive science) adequately stocked with causal-explanatory terms and
predicates, the latter requires a language equipped with just the sorts
of vocabulary that figure in our everyday as well as philosophical talk
of human meanings, motives, reasons, intentions, beliefs, desires,
attitudes, and so forth. On Davidsons accountand on Spinozas as
Davidson reads himwe can enjoy the full benefits of both while
preventing any possible conflict between them by keeping in mind
the central tenet of anomalous monism, that is, the lack of any nomic
(i.e., any fixed, invariant, or type-type) connection that might lend
credence to the strong reductionist or physicalist case. This theory
Davidson takes to be implicit in Spinozas idea of mind and body as
two different attributes of the self-same substance, and likewise in
his cautiously coded talk of deus sive naturagod or natureas
two distinct yet compatible ways of referring to a single ultimate
reality whose various modes (or particular instantiations) could just
as well be conceived under one or the other attribute.43
It is obvious enough why Davidson should look to Spinoza not
only as a thinker who arrived at some strikingly similar ideas about
the mindbody relationship but also as one who went a long way
toward Davidsons closely connected views on the nature of actions
and events. Thus he cites a well-known passage from the Ethics
in which Spinoza sets out his cardinal distinction between active

and passive powers: Our mind does certain things and undergoes
other things, viz. Insofar as it has adequate ideas, it necessarily does
certain things, and insofar as it has inadequate ideas, it necessarily
undergoes other things.44 He might just as well have cited a range
of other passages to similar effect, as when Spinoza states that
whatsoever increases or diminishes, helps or hinders the power of
activity in our body, the idea thereof increases or diminishes, helps
or hinders the power of thought in our mind, orby the same
tokenthat the mind, as far as it can, endeavors to conceive those
things, which increase or help the power of activity in the body.45
Davidson is clearly attracted to this as a way of reconceiving the
free willdeterminism issue that would seem to overcome that old
and (on its own terms) strictly insoluble antinomy by locating the
distinction between active and passive affects in the degree to which
the self-realizing powers of this or that particular mindbody have
attained their fullest scope of expression or exercise. Thus on the
positive side, Spinoza gives analyses of volition, perception, and
the emotions consistent with his thoroughgoing naturalism and
determinism. Perhaps the most striking feature of his concept of
action is that it differs from being acted on just to the extent that its
causes and effects lie within rather than outside us, and that this in
turn is a matter of the extent and character of our knowledge.46
However, he goes straight on to remark that this notion follow[s]
directly from [Spinozas] objective view of human beings as integral
parts of the causal chain of events and that even to us to whom this
attitude comes perhaps more naturally than to [his] contemporaries,
it is a sobering perspective.47 Yet, after all, that perspective is one
that Davidson must surely be taken to share if his monism is not to
appear as just a notional concession to the science-led intellectual
climate of our time and his use of the qualifying term anomalous
(i.e., his rejection of psychophysical laws) as a somewhat shifty de-
vice for avoiding the nemesis of a hard-line physicalist, central-state
materialist, or downright determinist creed.
In fact, it seems to me that Davidsons approach is not so much
an answer or a working solution to the problem of Cartesian dualism
as a conceptual sleight of hand or finessing of the issue that leaves
that problem very firmly in place. This emerges in the following
passage, where his usual, briskly problem-solving tone gives way

to a flat restatement of the old puzzle and what sounds very much
like an outlook of resigned acceptance that it cannot be resolved. I
confess, Davidson writes,
that I do not see how even the most complete understanding of

human psychology can avoid essential reference to the material
forces that impinge on us. Nor do I see how psychology, as long
as it deals with concepts such as those of action, intention, belief,
and desire, can either be reduced to the natural sciences or made
as exact and self-contained as physics. As I suggested, we may even
take Spinoza as having shown why such a psychology is impossible;
the nomological irreducibility of the mental to the physical can
be taken to point in this direction.48
So it seems that Davidsons theory of anomalous monism is not

so much clarified or rendered more plausible as it is pushed even
further out on a limb by this analogy with Spinoza on the dual,
self-subsistent, and causally isolated attributes of mind and body.
That is to say, it becomes even harder to conceive how the theory
could amount to a genuine or working monism, as distinct from a
self-defeating attempt to reconcile two contradictory or, at any rate,
mutually exclusive claims. Moreover, although his appeal to Spinoza
has a certain prima facie plausibility, it gives a similar impression of
evading the radical implications of Spinozas thought and reducing
what is truly exorbitant about itnot only in the view of his more
orthodox-minded contemporaries but also, as we have seen, in that
of many present-day admirersto little more than a convenient faon
de parler adopted by way of heading off certain otherwise intractable
philosophic problems. Thus one gets little sense from Davidsons ac-
count of what opponents at the timeand for a good two centuries
thereafterwere wont to denounce as Spinozas cryptoatheism, or
his promotion of a thoroughgoing determinist and materialist creed
under cover of a vaguely mystical or pantheist rhetoric.
That sense comes across far more powerfully in Deleuze, Balibar,
and other voices from the recent Continental reception-history who
emphasize both the uncompromising nature of Spinozas ontological
monism and the fact that it cannot be understoodat least without
massive distortionunless one interprets it in equally uncompromis-

ing naturalistic and materialist terms. This is no doubt one reason,
as Althusser and Balibar remark, why the history of philosophys
repressed Spinozism unfolded as a subterranean history at other sites,
in political and religious ideology (deism) and in the sciences, but
not on the illuminated stage of visible philosophy.49 For despite all
philosophys periodic claims, more than ever during the past few
decades, to have moved decisively beyond any form of Cartesian
mindbody dualism, that idea still exerts so strong a residual hold
that any truly radical break with itsuch as Spinoza representsis
apt to strike many as un-, pre-, or downright antiphilosophical.50
This applies especially to his doctrine of the positive and negative
(or joyful and sad) affects, one that finds room for freedom of will
and the notion of autonomous agency only insofar as these can be
squared with the single most basic Spinozist precept, that is, the in-
divisible unity of mind and body or the claim that they must always
be conceived as two attributes of the one, self-identical substance.
From this it follows that the process whereby passive dispositions take
on an active character or sad affects are converted into their joyful,
affirmative, life-enhancing counterparts cannot consist in some con-
scious effort of will or deliberate exercise of mind over matter such
that the one (mental) attribute would assert its claim to freedom and
self-fulfillment independently ofor in isolation fromthe other.
What we have to envisage, rather, is the activity of jointly mental
and physical striving (Spinozas conatus) through which every sen-
tient being endeavors to persist in its own proper and distinct mode
of existence, this latter conceived as a development toward its state
of maximum possible flourishing. What we are not to supposeat
least if convinced by Spinozas radically monist ontologyis that the
process might occur (as philosophers have often thought) through
the bending of our will or the summoning of mental, intellectual, or
moral resources that somehow belong to a realm quite apart from
that of our physical or bodily movements and affects.
So there are certain caveats that need to be entered before going
along with Davidsons case for viewing Spinoza as a champion of
anomalous monism avant la lettre. On this account, his strongest elec-
tive affinity in present-day terms is with the broadly compatibilist or
no problem thesis that physicalism and mentalism or brain-talk and
mind-talk can perfectly well be reconciled just so long as one assigns

them to different languages or conceptual-descriptive registers and
thus heads off any conflict between them.51 From the same distinctly
modern standpoint, there is nothing to be lostand a good deal to
be gainedby translating Spinozas ontological claims out of their
original, overly scholastic and metaphysically otiose idiom into one
that sheds all that surplus baggage through a careful restatement in
more up-to-date, that is, analytic and linguistic terms. Thus it looks as
if the Spinozist doctrine of substance and attributes can be rendered
acceptable by present-day standards of intelligibility and yet retain
everything distinctive about it through a straightforward process
of assimilation to something like Davidsons theory of anomalous
monism. Yet this does entail certain significant losses orfrom a
standpoint not so much in sympathy with the governing interests
of analytic philosophy after the linguistic turna tendency to opt
for the line of least resistance with regard to Spinozas most chal-
lenging claims. That is, it has recourse to a linguistified version of
the double-aspect theory that no doubt succeeds in outfacing the
threat of hard-line physicalist or central-state-materialist arguments
but only at the cost of so far reinterpreting Spinozas doctrine as to
render it consistent with Davidsons studiously noncommittal (not
to say somewhat evasive or shuffling) view of these matters.
Of course, there is a sense in which Spinozas writings lend them-
selves to just this kind of revisionist treatment insofar as they adopt
a systematically equivocal language or a trick of constantly playing
on phrasessuch as deus sive natura (god or nature) or the mind as
an idea of the bodythat leave commentators hard-pressed (or
perhaps gratefully unobliged) to decide between rival interpreta-
tions. All the same, this ignores several points that bear directly on
the question as to what counts as a valid understanding of crucial
Spinozist concepts and categories. One is the fact that Spinoza would
have seen absolutely no merit in the notion that those concepts and
categories made sense only to the extent that they played an accepted
role in some existing (whether everyday or specialized) linguistic
register.52 On the contrary, he thinks of natural language and its
various (supposed) imperfectionsvagueness, ambiguity, metaphor,
referential opacity, and so forthas among the chief obstacles to
philosophic progress and hence as standing in need of treatment
through an emendation of the intellect that would lead from

confused or imaginary notions to clear and distinct concepts.53 In
this respect, Spinoza agrees with his contemporariesrationalists
and empiricists alikethat language is, at best, an efficient (i.e.,
transparent or nondistorting) means for the conveyance of ideas
from one mind to another and, at worst, a continual source of er-
ror and mutual misunderstanding.54 Thus, since words are a part
of the imaginationthat is, since we form many conceptions in
accordance with confused arrangements of words in the memory,
dependent on particular bodily conditionsthere is no doubt that
words may, equally with the imagination, be the cause of many and
great errors, unless we keep strictly on our guard.55 David Savan
spells out the implications of this in a passage that leaves no doubt as
to the distance that separates Spinoza from many of his present-day
(including his best-willed or most sympathetic) exegetes. According
to Spinoza, he writes:
An idea is not an image and does not consist of words. A true idea
can neither arise from experience of words and images nor can it
be verified through such experience, for experience can give no
knowledge of essences... . Whereas an idea is certain, words are
uncertain.... And whereas it is of the nature of reason to consider
things as necessary and under a certain form of eternity, words
are connected with contingency and time.56
It is only from our own ensconced position on this side of the recent
though nowadays near-ubiquitous linguistic turn that such a notion
might seem philosophically naive, and then only insofar as we adopt
a Wittgensteinian rather than a Frege-Russell view of such matters.57
At any rate, Spinoza would have had little time for any argument
that construed his central doctrinethe mindbody identity thesis
in such a way as to empty it of all substantive content by lopping
off its ontological claims, espousing a linguistified version of the
double-aspect theory, and thereby allowing us to carry on talking
in the same old dualist terms.
That is to say, if Spinoza is indeed to be recruited in the name
of anomalous monism without resorting to a strong-revisionist (or
grossly inaccurate) account, then the monism needs to be taken at
full strength and the anomaly interpreted not as an absence of real,

objectively existent nomic regularities or causal laws but rather as
a frank admission that they areand may forever remainbeyond
our utmost powers of comprehension. Although Davidsons position
sometimes lends itself to glossing along these lines, he is more often
to be found insisting that because mind-events and brain-events are
under different descriptions, it is pointless (or strictly nonsensical)
to advance any strong, ontologically committed version of the mind
brain identity thesis.58 And again, because causes and reasons must
likewise be thought of as falling under different descriptionsbecause
they make sense only as playing a role in (respectively) the physical or
natural and the human or social sciencestherefore, on Davidsons
account, we shall go badly wrong and risk summoning the twin
specters of reductionism and determinism if we allow ourselves to
mix them up. Yet, of course, it was precisely Spinozas willingness to
raise those specters and to do so, moreover, without having recourse
to any such strategic or cryptodualist fallback stance that prompted
his expulsion from the Jewish community of Amsterdam and there-
after drew the wrath of orthodox religionists against him and anyone
brave or incautious enough to earn the label Spinozist.59 Nor can
Davidsons reading gain much in the way of added plausibility from
Spinozas other reputation as a mystically inclined pantheist thinker
orits close equivalent in psychophysical termsfrom his notion of
mind as an idea of the body, thus seeming to reverse the order of
priority and suggest some kind of mentalist (even panpsychist) view
of how their ultimate identity is best understood.60 What disappears
in Davidsons account is once again the extremityby any normal
philosophic standardof Spinozas monist doctrine. For those alter-
native idioms dont so much soften or defuse its determinist impact
as insist (like the phrase deus sive natura) on the need for all divine,
supernatural, and suchlike deluded or imaginary terms to be read
metaphorically or allegorically and thereby rendered consistent with
a thoroughly naturalized worldview.
It is this aspect of the radical Spinozathe philosophically exor-
bitant character of his thoughtthat comes across to more singular
and striking effect in the recent Continental (mainly French) reception
than among his analytically minded commentators. One reason, no
doubt, is that the Continentals have fewer inhibitions about pursuing
metaphysical themes, or pursuing them (so to speak) in a full-blood-

edly metaphysical way rather than in the scaled-down descriptivist
or semantic mode that has been the hallmark of most recent work
in the analytic tradition. Another is the way that commentators
such as Balibar, Macherey, Deleuze, and (most conspicuously) Negri
have shown a far greater willingness to integrate their often highly
speculative theses concerning Spinozas philosophic thought with
a detailed interest in the various historical and political events that
left a visible, sometimes decisive mark on the course of his life and
work.61 The great exception here is Althusser, who himself claimed
Spinozist (as well as Marxist) warrant for insisting on a sharp con-
ceptual distinction between ideology and science, or on one hand
the realm of commonsense, confused, or imaginary notions and
on the other hand the realm of adequate ideas arrived at through a
process of rigorously theorized rectification and critique. By the same
tokenand taking a lead from Gaston Bachelards method of applied
rationalism in philosophy of scienceAlthusser assumes that any
interest attaching to Spinozas life and its sociopolitical context may
well be legitimate for the purposes of intellectual biography or the
history of ideas but must always give way to quite different, altogether
more demanding standards of accountability when it comes to issues
of knowledge and truth.62 Thus Althussers approach, premised on
Spinozas distinction between the first (confused or imaginary) and
the second (adequate) kinds of knowledge, to this extent has more
in common with those analytic modes of thought that likewise
make a cardinal point of distinguishing context of discovery from
context of justification, or the background conditions of emergence
for this or that scientific hypothesis and the validity-conditions that
properly apply when it is subject to the rigors of empirical testing
and further theoretical analysis. In Althusser, this went along with
the notion of a Marxist theoretical practiceor labor of conceptual
critiquewhereby we might achieve an adequately theorized grasp
of how ideology exerted its otherwise ubiquitous power to interpel-
late subjects and their various modes of commonsense knowledge
and experience.63
As I have said, there was good Spinozist warrant for Althussers
claims in this regard, whatever the well-known problems with them
from a practical-political as well as philosophical standpoint. It
is also fairly clear how Spinoza could be read as offering support

for Althussers argumentin opposition to the humanist, Hegel-
influenced readings of Marx dominant in France at the timethat
a chief prerequisite for the better understanding of Marxs thought
was to break with such anthropocentric residues through a form of
theoretical antihumanism that sought to reveal its underlying concep-
tual or epistemocritical structures. Yet just as this involved a highly
partial and selective reading of Spinozaone premised exclusively on
the doctrine of adequate versus inadequate or imaginary ideasso
Althussers larger project ran aground (or so it has seemed to many
commentators) on its failure to explain how this ascetic imperative
could possibly provide any motivating impulse for political agency
and change.64 Indeed, it was largely in reaction against that high
structuralist or theoreticist project that thinkers like Deleuze, Balibar,
and Negrialbeit in different waysset out to make their case for
the other Spinoza, that is, the thinker whose undoubted commitment
to the rationalist way of ideas went along with an equal (and by no
means opposite) commitment to the maximization of active over
passive or joyful over sad affects. This is why the recent Continental
reception has typically managed to find room for a range of Spinoz-
ist themes and concerns that tend to be excludedor to figure only
marginallyin most analytic accounts. Or rather, it manages to take
simultaneous account of those various aspects of Spinozas work
that more often receive separate treatment by specialists in different
quarters of the Anglophone academic community.
Thus, for instance, there has been some groundbreaking work by
intellectual and cultural historians who have uncovered far more than
was previously known about the sociotheologicopolitical contexts
of Spinozas thought and its later reception. Most notable of these is
Jonathan Israels study of Spinoza as the central figure in that radical
enlightenment that emerged among certain dissident factions in the
seventeenth-century Dutch Republic and whose critical-emancipatory
character was tamed or repressed by the mainstream (bourgeois)
enlightenment that flourished in France and then Germany a century
later.65 Israels work belongs very much to a tradition of Spinoza
commentary in which detailed scholarship has often coexisted with
a strong sense of political partisanship or a marked sympathy for just
those motivating valuessecularism, tolerance, republican beliefs,
freedom of thought and expression, cosmopolitanism in the political,

legal, and juridical spheresfor which he stood as an emblematic
figure. It is a tradition that goes back, via champions like Lewis S.
Feuer, to the centuries-long history of his underground reputation,
when Spinozist (i.e., atheist, materialist, and politically subversive)
ideas were subject to vigorous church-and-state repression in many
parts of Europe and beyond.66 Then again, recent developments at
the interface between neuroscience and cognitive psychology have
led some admirerslike Damasioto hail Spinoza as a thinker far
ahead of his time in his outright rejection of Cartesian dualism, his
recognition of the strictly indissoluble tie between mind and body
or thought and emotion, and moreover, his having set forth these
prescient ideas in a way that falls square with some of the most
advanced current thinking in the field.67 Yet there is a strong sense
throughout Damasios book that he sees this approach as one that
holds the promise of rescuing Spinoza from the dead hand of phi-
losophy and granting him the favor of a reading informed by the
latest scientific knowledge. In Israels narrative likewise, the richness
and sophistication of historical scholarship goes along with a fairly
routine treatment of Spinozas philosophical ideas and a relative
lack of concern with their specific rather than general bearing on
that ferment of radical ideas that his book brings so vividly to life.
In fact, one has to look elsewhereto the French reception and its
complex interweaving of metaphysical or speculative with histori-
cal, political, and sociocultural themesto gain a more adequate
(i.e., philosophically informed and integrated) view of Spinozas
galvanizing role.
My point is not to suggest that we should reconcile these di-
verse claims on Spinozas behalf in some kind of grand synthesis.
Such a prospect is neither realistic nor even desirable, given what
we surely should have learned from Spinoza and his best exegetes,
that is, that his thinking stubbornly resists assimilation to any of the
ready-made concepts or categories by which philosophers, no less
than intellectual historians, try to keep things safely under control.
This is no doubt why the many attempts to recruit Spinoza to this
or that philosophic causefor free will or determinism, panthe-
ism or atheism, compatibilism vis--vis the mindbody issue or a
hard-line physicalist positionhave always and inevitably run into
problems when striving to square these doctrines with a properly

attentive, impartial reading of his work. Indeed, a chief lesson of
the modern French reception, and one that could only have resulted
from its greater degree of speculative license, is the strange copres-
ence in Spinozas thought of a rationalism aimed toward removing
or correcting all the causes and effects of the minds enslavement
to the passions and a countervailing will to intensify those passions
to the point where they are no longer merely suffered but actively
promoted and enjoyed. Thus the compact history of visions and
revisions that leads from Althusser to Deleuze and that takes in
the shift of focus exhibited by thinkers like Balibar and Macherey
is one firmly grounded at every stage in a detailed engagement with
Spinozas texts and in no way contravening the letter or the spirit of
those texts. Rather it is a faithful reflection that Spinoza remains the
great exceptionin Negris phrase, the savage anomalywhose
thinking is able to solicit and support (if not fully accommodate or
reconcile) such a range of conflicting interpretations.
All the same, there is something distinctly unsatisfactory about
the way that historians, philosophers, critical theorists, and lately
cognitive psychologists have tended each to go their own way and
stake their claim to the new or radical Spinoza without much sign
of either knowing or caring what the others have to say. This is not,
I think, just because they come at his ideas from such divergent and
specialized angles of interest but also because the philosophers
who might be expected to mediate these various concernsare
themselves so deeply at odds with regard to the nature, import,
and present-day significance of Spinozas work. That is to say, there
exists such a gulf between the two philosophical cultures and their
respective ideas of what constitutes a valid or worthwhile contribu-
tion to debate that it is hard for people in other disciplines to get any
confident purchase on the issues involved. Thus there is reason to
suggest that Jonathan Israel might usefully have looked to Deleuze
and Balibar by way of philosophic support for his conception of
Spinoza as a seminal thinker of the radical enlightenment. Moreover,
Damasio might likewise have drawn on Deleuzeon his detailed
working-out of the Spinozist idea of active versus passive affectsas
offering a line of approach very much to his own neuroscientific and
cognitivepsychological purposes. What has so far got in the way
of such productive exchange is that most workers in those other

fields tend to take their philosophic bearings from a received, often
analytically filtered account of Spinozas thought that finds no room
for such suspecthermeneutically venturesomeapproaches. This
is not so much a matter of tough-minded analytic commentaries
in the mode of rational reconstruction descending from Bertrand
Russell and taken up with comparable vigor by Jonathan Bennett.68
In their case, the treatment is so frankly selective and the ideas they
cant accept so forcefully denounced that readers are left in no doubt
regarding the dominant agenda. Rather it is the more moderate de-
scriptivist programof which Stuart Hampshire is the best-known
exponentthat has exerted such a deep and pervasive influence on
the way that Spinoza is typically read by Anglophone philosophers
and also by those (intellectual historians among them) who take their
cue from that same dominant tradition.69 Here the main object
with Spinoza, as likewise with Leibniz, Kant, and othersis to coax
these thinkers down from the heights of metaphysical or speculative
thought and lead them back to a sensible acceptance that, in truth,
philosophy can do no more than describe or map the conceptual
geography of our various, whether everyday or scientific, modes
of knowledge and experience.70
Yet if there is one thing that Spinoza stands up for contra this
whole way of thinking, it is the need for philosophy to challenge,
criticize, andwhere necessaryamend or rectify such taken-for-
granted notions. Moreover, as again emerges very strongly from the
recent French reception, this applies just as much to Spinozas radically
heterodox thinking about ethics and politics as to his thinking on
matters of ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. In my
book, I put the case for Spinoza as the single most important, albeit
underrecognized, source for many then current or lately emergent
ideas in critical and literary theory. What I have sought to do here
is make a similar case for the potential of a close engagement with
Spinozas thought to revitalize large areas of present-day philosophic
discourse by cutting across their more restrictive and narrowly special-
ized concerns. Above all, it brings out the impossibility of addressing
such core topicseven after the much-heralded linguistic turn
without raising substantive metaphysical issues that go well beyond
the scaled-down descriptivist conception that marks the outer bound
of acceptability for most analytic thinkers. In this respect, Spinoza

poses a greater challenge than Kant, despite the latters role in a good
deal of recent analytic philosophy as representing either the kinds
of metaphysical temptation that we have nowadays thankfully laid
to rest or else (more in keeping with Kants self-estimate) a means
of putting philosophy back on its feet by precisely defining its opera-
tive scope and limits.71 For that role has much to do with the clear
continuitypointed out by recent commentatorsbetween Kants
epistemological project and the analytic enterprise that took shape
largely as a linguistic (or logicosemantic) transposition of central
Kantian themes.72
Thus one way of writing the history of analytic philosophy is
as a series of attempted and loudly proclaimed breaks with Kant
especially with his subject-centered epistemology and his doctrine
of synthetic a priori knowledgethat have then periodically given
way to various attempts at a partial reconciliation along descriptiv-
ist, naturalized, or other such revisionist lines.73 What has led to
this oscillating pattern of rejection and qualified acceptance is the
presence within analytic philosophy of just the same chronically
unstable dualismssubject and object, mind and world, concept
and intuitionthat Kant claimed to resolve in his first Critique but
that have nonetheless continued to vex thinkers from the German
post-Kantian idealists to John McDowell. It is the same with those
recent efforts to dismount from the seesaw (McDowells phrase),
or at any rate to damp down its movements, whether by following
Sellars and Davidson in their attack on the empiricist myth of the
given, along with its attendant schemecontent dichotomy, or else
by invoking some naturalized (or detranscendentalized) version of
Kant.74 That these efforts have failedthat the dualism always crops
up again in a more-or-less covert, displaced, or surrogate formis a
case borne out (as I have argued elsewhere) by a good many episodes
in recent analytic debate.75 My point now, by way of conclusion, is
that Spinozas radically monist understanding of mind and body or
mind and world offers by far the most effective counterinstance to this
whole way of thinking and its hold on philosophers from Descartes
down. Moreover, it constitutes a standing reproof to that other
tenacious dualism that has had such a damaging effect on recent
philosophical debate, namely, the splithowever one perceives it
between the analytic and Continental traditions of thought. For there

is no hope that philosophy will rise to the Spinozist challenge unless it
puts away some of the fixed preconceptions that have so far acted as
a strong disincentive for taking that challenge at its full philosophic,
that is, ontoepistemological as well as ethicopolitical force.
Notes
1 See, e.g., from various philosophic and political perspectives, Etienne
Balibar, Spinoza and Politics (London: Verso, 1998); Lewis Samuel
Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (Boston: Beacon Press,
1958); Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the
Making of Modernity, 16501750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002); Christopher Norris, Spinoza and the Origins of Modern Criti-
cal Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Gideon Segal and Yirmiyahu
Yovel, eds., Spinoza (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2002); Paul Wienpahl,
The Radical Spinoza (New York: New York University Press, 1979);
Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1, The Marrano of
Reason, and vol. 2, The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
2 See esp. Stephen Nadler, Spinozas Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish
Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Samuel J. Preuss, Spi-
noza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001); Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and
the Question of Jewish Identity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1997); Theo Verbeek, Spinozas Theologico-Political Treatise:
Exploring The Will of God (London: Ashgate, 2003); Yovel, Spinoza
and Other Heretics, 2 vols.
3 See various entries under n. 1 and 2; see also Frederick C. Beiser,
The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978); Moira Gatens and Genevieve
Lloyd, Collective Imaginings: Spinoza Past and Present (London: Rout-
ledge, 1999); Leszek Kolakowski, The Two Eyes of Spinoza, in
Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Marjorie Grene, 27994
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1973).
4 Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left
Books, 1969), and Althusser, Elements of Self-Criticism, in Essays
in Self-Criticism, 10161 (London: New Left Books, 1976); Louis

Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster
(London: New Left Books, 1970); Etienne Balibar, Spinoza and Poli-
tics; Pierre Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza? (Paris: Maspero, 1979), and
Macherey, In a Materialist Way: Selected Essays, ed. Warren Montag,
trans. Ted Stolze (London: Verso, 1998).
5 See esp. Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert
Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), and Deleuze, Ex-
pressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York:
Zone Books, 1992); see also the various references to Spinoza in
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1987).
6 Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley (India-
napolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2001). See entries under n. 2; also Israel,
Radical Enlightenment; Robert J. McShea, The Political Philosophy of
Spinoza (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968); Richard H.
Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979); Leo Strauss, Spinozas Critique
of Religion, trans. E.M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken Books, 1965);
Silvain Zac, Spinoza et linterpretation de lcriture (Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France, 1965), and Zac, Philosophie, Thologie, Politique
dans loeuvre de Spinoza (Paris: Vrin, 1979).
7 Norris, Spinoza and the Origins of Modern Critical Theory.
8 See esp. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinozas Ethics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), and Bennett, Learning from Six
Philosophers, vol. 1, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2001); also Donald Davidson, Spinozas Causal Theory of
the Affects, in Truth, Language, and History, 295313 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005); Alan Donagan, Spinoza (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988); Grene, Spinoza: A Collection of
Critical Essays; Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (Harmondsworth, U.K.:
Penguin, 1951); G.H.R. Parkinson, Spinozas Theory of Knowledge
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953). Two anthologies that offer a
useful conspectus of past and present scholarship, commentary,
and criticism are Genevieve Lloyd, ed., Spinoza, 4 vols. (London:
Routledge, 2001) and Don Garrett, ed., The Cambridge Companion
to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
9 See n. 4 and 5.
10 See n. 4 and 8.
11 For further discussion, see Norris, Spinoza and the Origins of Modern
Critical Theory.
12 Spinoza, Ethics, in The Collected Writings of Spinoza, vol. 1, trans.
Edwin Curley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
13 Bennett, A Study of Spinozas Ethics, 373.
14 Ibid., 374.
15 See Jacques Derrida, Diffrance, in Margins of Philosophy, trans.
Alan Bass, 327 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
16 See entries under n. 8.
Brain (London: Heinemann, 2003). See also Jerome Neu, Emotion,
Thought, and Therapy: A Study of Hume and Spinoza, and the Relation-
ship of Philosophical Theories of the Emotions to Psychological Theories
of Therapy (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1978).
18 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith
(London: Macmillan, 1964).
19 For further argument to this effect, see Christopher Norris, Minding
the Gap: Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in the Two Traditions
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000); Norris, Truth
Matters: Realism, Anti-realism, and Response-dependence (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2002); Norris, Philosophy of Language
and the Challenge to Scientific Realism (London: Routledge, 2004);
Norris, On Truth and Meaning: Language, Logic, and the Grounds of
Belief (London: Continuum, 2006).
20 See n. 4 and 5.
21 See n. 6.
22 See, e.g., Edwin M. Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Read-
ing of Spinozas Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1988).
23 See n. 6.
24 Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinozas Meta-
physics and Politics, trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1991).
25 See esp. Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1938).
26 Bennett, A Study of Spinozas Ethics.
27 Donagan, Spinoza.
28 See esp. Israel, Radical Enlightenment; also Margaret Gullan-Whur,
Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998), and
Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999).
29 See esp. Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, and Negri, Savage Anomaly.
30 See n. 13 and 6.
31 Donagan, Spinoza, 1011.
32 See n. 4.
33 Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, 18889.
34 Ibid., 16.
35 Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, 129.
36 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, and Gilles Deleuze
and Flix Guattari, The Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis:
37 See n. 1, 3, 5, and 22.
38 Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Texts and Discussions, trans
and ed. Christie V. McDonald, Claude Lvesque, and Peggy Kamuf
(New York: Schocken Books, 1985).
39 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak (Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 158.
40 Ibid.
42 Davidson, Spinozas Causal Theory of the Affects.
43 For further elucidation of these arguments, see Davidson, Essays
on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
44 Spinoza, Ethics III, P1.
45 Spinoza, Ethics II, P2n.
46 Davidson, Spinozas Causal Theory of the Affects, 310.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., 312.
49 Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, 102.
50 See esp. Tim Crane and Sarah Patterson, eds., A History of the Mind
Body Problem (London: Routledge, 2000); also D.M. Armstrong and
Norman Malcolm, Consciousness and Causality: A Debate on the Nature
of Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984); Cynthia Macdonald, MindBody
Identity Theories (London: Routledge, 1989); G.N.A. Vesey, ed.,
Body and Mind: Readings in Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin,

1964).
51 For further discussion, see entries under n. 50; also Margaret Donald-
son, Human Minds: An Exploration (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin,
1992); Stephen Priest, Theories of the Mind (Harmondsworth, U.K.:
Penguin, 1991); David M. Rosenthal, ed., The Nature of Mind (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
52 See esp. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans.
G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959); also Richard Rorty,
ed., The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), andfrom a dissenting
standpointC.W.K. Mundle, A Critique of Linguistic Philosophy
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), and Norris, Philosophy of Language.
53 Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Understanding, in The Chief Works
of Benedict de Spinoza, ed. and trans. R.H.M. Elwes, 2:341 (New
York: Dover, 1951).
54 For some highly relevant commentary, see Ian Hacking, Why Does
Language Matter to Philosophy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1975); also Norris, Spinoza and the Origins of Modern Critical
Theory, 10342; G.H.R. Parkinson, Language and Knowledge in
Spinoza, in Grene, Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, 73100;
David Savan, Spinoza and Language, in Studies in Spinoza: Criti-
cal and Interpretative Essays, ed. S. Paul Kashap, 23648 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972).
55 Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Understanding, 33.
56 Savan, Spinoza and Language, 239.
57 See the essays collected in Rorty, The Linguistic Turn, for a representa-
tive sampling of work in both these traditions, i.e., the Frege-Russell,
or echt-analytic, and the Wittgenstein-Austin, or ordinary-language,
lines of descent.
58 See n. 43.
59 See n. 1, 2, and 6.
60 For the most recent and controversial statement of this position, see
David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental
Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
61 See n. 6, 24, and 28.
62 See esp. Gaston Bachelard, The Philosophy of No, trans. G.C. Wa-
terston (New York: Orion Press, 1969), and Bachelard, The New
Scientific Spirit, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Boston: Beacon Press,

1984); also Mary Tiles, Bachelard: Science and Objectivity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984).
63 See n. 4; also Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Appara-
tuses, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster,
12173 (London: New Left Books, 1977).
64 See esp. Ted Benton, The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism (London:
New Left Books, 1984), and Gregory Elliott, Althusser: The Detour
of Theory (London: Verso, 1987).
65 Israel, Radical Enlightenment.
66 See Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, and other entries under
n. 1, 2, 6, and 24.
67 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza.
69 Hampshire, Spinoza.
70 For classic examples of this approach, see P.F. Strawson, Individuals:
An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen, 1959), and
Strawson, The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kants Critique of Pure
Reason (London: Methuen, 1966).
71 For representative surveys, see Graham Bird, ed., A Companion to
Kant (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); Paul Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Com-
panion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
72 See esp. Robert Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
73 See Norris, Minding the Gap; also J. Alberto Coffa, The Semantic
Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
74 John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1994); see also Christopher Norris, McDowell on
Kant: Redrawing the Bounds of Sense, and Norris, The Limits
of Naturalism: Further Thoughts on McDowells Mind and World,
in Norris, Minding the Gap, 17296, 197230, respectively.
75 Norris, Minding the Gap.
2
What Is a Proof in
Spinozas Ethics?
alain badiou
as we know from all the literature on Spinoza, the question of the

unity of Spinozas philosophy is a very difficult one, as is the ques-
tion of the nature of his work. I completely agree with Christopher
Norris, who writes in the previous chapter of the conflict of inter-
pretations. I dont know of any other philosopher who has been a
fundamental reference for so many completely opposed philosophi-
cal trends. This point is particularly striking in the recent French
philosophy. Louis Althusser proposes to read Spinoza as the greatest
materialist philosopher in the genealogy of Marx, in which Spinoza
plays the role of the dialectical contradictory term of Hegel. Pierre
Macherey, in the same line, concludes that Spinoza is the only true
pre-Marxist philosopher. With Martial Guroult, we have a purely
constructive vision of Spinoza, as the complete achievement of
classical rationalism. For Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza is the philosopher
of the close relationship between the creative power of life and the
expressive power of concepts. For many thinkers in the tradition of
Jewish theology, Spinoza is an example of pure spirituality, whereas
for some others of the same tradition, like Benny Levy, Spinoza is a
terrible and negative example of the way in which the letter of the
Law was corrupted and became a sort of fetishism of the scientific
deduction. For Jean Cavaills, Spinoza advocates the perfect identity
between a logical framework in ontology and the necessity of posi-
tive action in ethics. For the followers of Antonio Negri, Spinoza
represent nothing less than the first philosophical communism, for
39
40 A LAI N BADI OU
all the followers of Deleuze, Spinoza wrote the greatest book in favor
of a qualitative and intensive conception of nature, whereas Charles
Ramond sustains with strong arguments that Spinoza promotes a
strictly extensive and quantitative vision of the real worldand so on.
In this context, it seems impossible to hope for the discovery of a
true Spinoza, perhaps because Spinoza is not reducible to philosophy,
or more precisely, because his work is something that composes the
strange unity of three different intellectual creations: conceptual,
spiritual, and artistic. We can read his Ethics as a radical attempt to
create a purely immanentist ontology, but we can also read it as a
book of wisdom, in which some sentences are much more important
than the deductive framework.
Spinoza writes, for instance, in Ethics IV, P67, that a free man
thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation
not of death but of life; in Ethics IV, P71, that only free men are
truly grateful one to the other; and in Ethics V, P62, which is also
the final proposition of Ethics, that blessedness is not the reward
of virtue, but virtue itself. Arent all these like some beautiful and
poetic aphorisms of a master of wisdom?
But we can also read Ethics as a pure artistic construction, in
which, like in Wittgensteins Tractatus, the deductive transparency
is the sensible, the musical medium that leads to a pleasure with no
other destination than itself. And the famous intellectual love of
God is then, in fact, the love without object that we feel when we
enjoy the reading of Ethics.
So Spinoza is a philosopher of immanence, but he is something
else besides, maybe something greater: a master of spirituality and
an abstract artist. And thats why the question of Spinozas style is so
important. But we find once more that the question of style, or more
precisely, the question of the different styles of Spinoza, constitutes
in itself a battlefield of interpretations. For some of them, there
is a constant unity of style, but for some others, there are evident
ruptures. Antonio Negri, for example, would like to demonstrate
that the style of the first two parts is the style of a metaphysical ra-
tionalism, concerning the fixed Substance, but that the style of the
last three books is something completely new, a savage anomaly
or novelty that envelops a thinking of potency as such, a thinking
of ontological creativity. Gilles Deleuze distinguishes the deductive
WHAT IS A PROOF IN SPINOZAS ETHICS? 41
style of appendices and scholia. For him, the difference of styles is

a sort of symptom for the complex interplay between a theory of
multiplicities and a theory of expressivity.
My own access to Spinoza will also be a formal one. I will begin
with a paradoxical remark: in fact, the great majority of readings of
Spinoza do not care at all about the most extensive part of the text
of the Ethics, as this most extensive part consists in the proofs of the
propositions. And though you have many commentaries about the
257 propositions (the Latin word is propositio), many commentaries
about appendices and about notes (scholium) or explanations (expli-
catio), there are very few commentaries about the near 300 proofs
(demonstratio).
I think that this in itself proves empirically a very important point
concerning the huge field of interpretations. That is to say, that the
really exceptional form of Ethics, the mathematical form, as well
as that Spinoza writes just under the title Ethics that this ethics is
ordine geometrico demonstrate (proved in geometrical order), all these
things have, for the great majority of interpretations, either a purely
symbolic signification or no importance at all.
My approach is here, on the contrary, to take seriously in consid-
eration the geometrical order. I intend to read all the details of the
proofs, to accept without restriction the fundamental idea of Spinoza
himself: we can go mathematically from a mathematics of being to a
mathematics of eternal love and intellectual blessedness. The secret
of freedom lies in the full understanding of the logical necessity, and
the political consequences are that the secret of victory of weakness
and poverty over power and wealth does not lie in a negative revolt
but in a positive discipline, or that the force of equality does not
resemble the natural force of a storm but the mental inflexibility
of a proof. With Spinozas more geometrico, we learn that we have to
act, not within the violent disorder of the chaos, but within the cold
quietness of the stars, because in the most radical action, we have to
persist in the most important positive emotion, positive affect, which
is acquiescentia in se ipso, welcoming of oneself, or, if you accept this
translation, self-welcoming. This affect is defined by Spinoza in the
Definitions of the Affects (E III) as laetitia, orta ex eo, quod homo se
ipsum, suamque agendi potentiam contemplatur (pleasure arising from
the fact that man regards himself and his power of acting).
42 A LAI N BADI OU
To find the pleasure of contemplating our power of acting in

the action itself, we have to be as quiet and cold as the action is violent
and confusing. We have not to be swayed by the anxiety for the result
of our action but rather carried by its immanent discipline. We have
to exist not only in the emotions of our bodies but in the eternal
knowledge of these emotions: Mens nostra, quatenus se et corpus sub
aeternitatis specie cognoscit (EV, P30, the human mind insofar as it
knows itself and its body under the species of eternity). In this read-
ing of Spinoza, we have to exist as much as possible, not only in the
propositions as results but in the process of the proofs, because the
proofs are the true knowledge of the necessity of the result.
The latest translator of Ethics in French, Bernard Pautrat, gives us
a clear maxim to read Spinoza. In the foreword of his translation, he
writes, We have to read Spinozas Ethics as a book of mathematics,
the contents of which is composed of proved truths, more as a book
of philosophy disguised in a book of mathematics.
Insofar as Ethics is really a mathematics of being, it is also the
book of an artist and of a master of wisdom. Since Platos Republic,
we know that without geometry, it is impossible to find an access
to justice, and we know since Aristotle, in Metaphysics Beta, that it
exists a fundamental artistic disposition of mathematical objects.
Spinoza himself, in the appendix to the first part of Ethics, writes,
The truth might have lain hidden from the human race through all
eternity, had not mathematics, which deals not in the final causes,
but the essence and properties of things, offered to men another
standard of truth. Only mathematics offers to us an other standard
of truth, and this other standard is simultaneously conceptual,
ethical, and artistic. It is truth, but truth as action and beauty. So to
read Spinoza is to read not only propositions, explanations, scholia,
and appendices but also to read proofs, and to read proofs as proofs.
It is the only way to constitute Ethics as a book of mathematicsa
mathematics of Being.
It is naturally impossible to explain here all the consequences of
this reading. Among these consequences, we discover a great number
of new reasons for admiring Spinoza, and also some new reasons for
criticizing him, when the consistency of the proof is dubious. For a
proof that is not a proof is, in the framework of Spinozas philosophy,
a kind of blindness of the human mind. In Ethics V, P23S, Spinoza
writes something striking: The eyes of the mind by which it sees

things and observes them are proofs. The relationship of our mind
with the real things is made of proofs. A false proof is the destruc-
tion of this relationship. Therefore we have to explore, proposition
after proposition, proof after proof, the clarity of the vision of the
real by this exceptional mind that lies and acts under the name of
Spinoza. I have done this exercise concerning Part I of Ethics and
some parts of Part II. You can find some fragmentary results of this
reading in one chapter of my Being and Event and in the chapter of
my Theoretical Writings titled Spinozas Closed Ontology.
Here I want to propose a new, limited, and more formal exercise
concerning one proof, a complex one. It is the Proof of Proposition
28 of Part I. The skeleton of this proof can be found below. I will
begin by explaining two points: first, why I have chosen this special
proposition for our methodological exercise, and second, what is
exactly the skeleton of a proof.
In the first part of Ethics, Proposition 28 has a strategic function
concerning the immanent distinction between finite and infinite.
This distinction is immanent by Proposition 15: Whatever is, is
in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God. So a
finite thing is in God and an infinite one also. We cannot distinguish
between finite and infinite things by the very nature or the true being
of these things, for the being of everything is God, who is the only
substance, or, as Spinoza says in Proposition 18, Deus est omnium
rerum causa immanens, non vero transiens (God is the immanent and
not the transient cause of all things). So we can only distinguish be-
tween finite things and infinite things by their relationship to other
things. It is clear from Definition 2, at the very beginning of the book,
that, ontologically, the distinction between finite and infinite is only
a relative one: That thing is said to be finite in its kind [in suo generi
finite] which can be limited by another thing of the same kind. For
example, a body is said to be finite because we can conceive another
larger than it. The distinction is not intrinsic but relational.
Proposition 28 extends this idea to the most important relationship
between all things that exist in God, or in Nature, that is, causality.
Exactly as a finite thing must be limited by another finite thing, a
finite thing must be the transient cause of another finite thing.
You have on one side God as the immanent cause of all things,
44 A LAI N BADI OU
finite or infinite, that exist in Him. On the other side, you have the
transient cause of a thing, its immediate cause. But here the problem
is more complex. Certainly an infinite thing cannot have, as its im-
mediate cause, a finite thing. It is a fundamental idea of Descartes,
and it is the heart of his first proof of the existence of God. I have
in my mind the Idea of an infinite being, the formal dimension of
this idea is the infinite, but my mind is finite. So the cause of this
idea cannot be my mind or a finite idea in my mind. Only an infinite
being was able to create this idea and put it in my mind. Spinoza,
in a certain sense, reverses the proof. For him, it is properly impos-
sible that an infinite thing would be directly the cause of a finite
one. It would be a miracle, and for Spinoza, there are no miracles
in Nature or in God. A finite thing is certainly created by God and
in God, but the means of the creation, the immediate or transient
cause, is another finite thing that is created by God and in God by
the means of another finite thing, and so on. Finally, the causality
organizes in God all finite things in infinite chains along the line of
immediate causality. In this sense, there is a sort of self-sufficiency
of the realm of finite things. The substantial reality of this realm is
the infinite God, but from the point of view of immediate determi-
nation, a finite thing is in relationship only with other finite things.
And thats why we can hope to construct a positive science of the
immediate determination inside the finitude of our mind. That is
the strategic function of Proposition 28. Every individual thing, or
whatever thing that is finite and has a determinate existence, can-
not exist nor be determined for action, unless it is determined for
action and existence by another cause which is also finite and has a
determinate existence; and again, this cause also cannot exist nor
be determined for action unless it be determined for existence and
action by another cause which also is finite and has a determinate
existence: and so on to infinity. We can say that this proposition as-
serts something like the closure of the finite in respect to the relation
of immediate causality.
Now, what is the skeleton of a proof ? In Figure 2.1, you have the
skeleton of Proposition 28. It is the deductive genealogy of the propo-
sition, and here P stands for proposition, A for axiom, C for
corollary, and D for definition. In the last column on the right,
column 8, you find the proposition itself, as the result of the proof.
I II III IV V VI VII VIII

A1 D3 D5
D8 P20 C20
D4 P19
D2 P21P22
A7 P11
D1 P7
D3 P2*P5 P6 C6
A4 A5 P3
D1 P4 C24
D6 P14 P28
D3 D6 P5*P11
A1 A4 P4
D3 D5 P1
D5
A4 P25 C25
*P15
D3 D5 A1 P15
*P14
*P25 P26
Obvious P16
I II III IV V VI VII VIII
figure 2.1. Skeleton of proof of Ethics I, P28.
For a proof, you can use, first, any proposition that has been proved
before, in this case, six propositions: 21, 22, 26, and Corollaries to
Propositions 20, 24, and 25. Second, you can use some of the initial
axioms, in this case, Axiom 1. And third, you can use some of the
initial definitions, here, Definitions 3 and 5.
In column 6, you find all that is necessary to have proofs of all
the propositions used in the Proof of Proposition 28. For example,
to prove Propositions 21 and 22, we must use Definition 2 and
Proposition 11. To prove the Corollary to Proposition 24, we must
use Proposition 14 itself and Proposition 4. Why do we have, at the
46 A LAI N BADI OU
bottom of column 6, a star before P25? It is because Proposition

25 has been used before, and so its skeleton is already inscribed in
column 5.
So, in a column, we have all that is necessary to prove all propo-
sitions of the following column. The process ends when we have a
column without any proposition, that is, a column with only initial
axioms or initial definitions. This is the case in our first column, with
only Definition 3 and the two Axioms 3 and 5.
You understand that the extent of the skeleton is a measure of
the complexity of the proof, and in philosophical matters, the com-
plexity of a proof is a measure of the difficulty of the problem or a
measure of the strength of the proposition in the conceptual field.
We can say that the extent of the skeleton of a proof is linked to the
synthetic power of that proposition.
In fact, the skeleton of Proposition 28 is the most extensive
skeleton in Part I of the Ethics. It utilizes seventeen propositions,
seven definitions, and four axioms. We have here a formal proof of
the strategic function of this proposition: its deductive machinery
mobilizes practically all the conceptual means of the Spinozan
ontology. The reason is that the law of the relative independency
of the finite things has a double use: a negative one and a positive
one. Negatively, this law destroys the religious claim of a direct and
transient relationship between the infinite Being and the becoming of
the finite things. This negative result means that there is no creation
of the world ex nihilo, and there are no miracles. Positively, the law
asserts the possibility of a complete and scientific knowledge of the
determination of finite things. This yes to positive science, and this
no to miracles, explain why Spinoza was, during the eighteenth
century, something like the scandalous and essential specter of
reasonin the same light that Marx saw communism as the specter
of politics during the nineteenth century. And Proposition 28 of Part
I of Ethics is the conceptual framework for this specter.
But the skeleton of the proof is also a sort of spectral analysis
of the entire ontology of Spinoza. Through the machinery of the
proof, we directly see what is really crucial in the statements of this
ontology. For example, we noticed that Definitions 3 and 5 are used
repeatedly: four times in the skeleton of one proposition! But what
are these definitions? Definition 3 is the definition of the substance,

so the definition of Being qua Being, and Definition 5 is the definition
of what is a modification of a substance or of what is, not in itself, but
in something else. But we know that nothing else exists as the unique
Substance, the name of which is God, and its modifications. This is
the content of Proposition 30: Intellect, finite or infinite in actual-
ity, must comprehend the attributes of God and the modifications
of God and nothing else. So the Proof of Proposition 28 indicates
already, by its form, the very essence of Spinozas ontology.
I give you another example. We observe in the skeleton of the
proof that Proposition 11 is used twice (in the Proof of Propositions
21 and 22 and in the Proof of Proposition 14). But in fact, it is used
once more, for it is in the skeleton of Proposition 14, which is itself
used twice. Just from its use, we can imagine that this proposition
has a strategic significanceand it has indeed, for Proposition 11
asserts the existence of God: God, or a substance consisting of infi-
nite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence,
necessarily exists. So important is this proposition that Spinoza
gives us no less than three different proofs. We clearly understand
the strategic function of this proposition, and this strategic function
is immediately visible in the disposition of the Proof of another
strategic proposition, Proposition 28.
Finally, we can propose a sort of parody of one of the most famous
statements of Spinoza, which we find in Ethics II, P7: The order and
connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
We can also say that the order and connection of sentences in the
skeleton of a proof is the same as the order and connection of the con-
cepts that are presented by the proposition that is proved by this proof.
Thats why the more geometrico is not at all a pure form or an
artificial disposition imposed on a conceptual movement. The math-
ematical form is appropriate to the mathematical contents. As we
have seen, proofs are the eyes of the mind. Thats why what the mind
sees is of mathematical nature. For we have only God and all sorts
of immanent modifications of God, exactly as we have an infinite
geometrical space and all sorts of figures and transformations in it.
And the reality of figures and transformations is made of points in
space, is made of space itself, exactly as the reality of modes is made
48 A LAI N BADI OU
of substance. And finally, the result of a transformation applied to

a finite figure is another finite figure, exactly as the cause of a finite
thing is an other finite thing. This is precisely the content of our
Proposition 28. In fact, the most secret, and simultaneously explicit,
proposition of Spinoza is that Being is a geometrical order. Being is
the geometry of all possible geometries. And the geometry has to
be exposed in geometrical order, more geometrico, not by choice but
by necessity. The geometrical order is the only language worthy of
God, God who is the space of all things.
In fact, it is the only eternal language. The true being of our
mind is, as says Ethics V, P40S, aeternus cogitandi modus, an eternal
mode of thinking. The only possible way to inscribe this eternal
mode of thinking is the totally universal language of mathematics,
a language that is, as Jacques Lacan said, a complete transmission,
a transmission without rest.
This is a sufficient reason to reject all interpretations of Spinoza
based on potency in terms of virtuality, on action in terms of actual-
ization, or on desire in terms of creativity of life. In the geometrical
order, which expresses the divine geometry or the mathematics
of Being, nothing is virtual, and everything is actual. Nothing is a
creation, and everything except God is a consequence. Even the act
of thinking has no relation with a virtual disposition. In Ethics I,
P31, Spinoza speaks of the intellect in actuality. But immediately
after, in a scholium, he specifies, The reason why I speak here of
intellect in actuality is not that I concede that intellect in potential-
ity can be granted. If, in our reading, we respect Spinozas style,
it becomes properly impossible to interpret his vision as a kind of
classical Nietzscheism. For Spinoza, action is not a name for life.
Action is a name for truth or for adequate ideas. This appears
clearly, first, in the proof Ethics III, P3, the actions of the mind arise
from adequate ideas alone, and second, in the Proof of Proposi-
tion 40, the property of intellect through which alone we are said
to act. So action is a property of the intellect, and this property
arises from adequate ideas only. So only the actual existence of an
adequate idea is active, and virtuality is always confusing and passive.
Therefore intellect in potentiality cannot be granted; nothing in
potentiality can be granted. All that exists is an active process, is
actual in the global geometrical space, of which we can write only

in the partial but exact geometric order. The eyes of the mind are
proofs because the light of God expresses forever what the French
poet Lautramont names the strict mathematics, or perhaps more
precisely, the harsh mathematics. Philosophy, as a masochist lover,
has to accept this harsh mistress. The Spinozan reward is that laetitia
concomitante idea suipleasure accompanied by the idea of iself
which is nothing less than eternal love. Is there something better?
It is up to you to decide.
3
The Joyful Passions in
Spinozas Theory
of Relations
simon duffy
the theme of the conflict between the different interpretations

of Spinozas philosophy in French scholarship, introduced by Chris-
topher Norris in this volume and expanded on by Alain Badiou, is
also central to the argument presented in this chapter. Indeed, this
chapter will be preoccupied with distinguishing the interpretations of
Spinoza by two of the figures introduced by Badiou. The interpreta-
tion of Spinoza offered by Gilles Deleuze in Expressionism in Philosophy
provides an account of the dynamic changes or transformations of
the characteristic relations of a Spinozist finite existing mode, or hu-
man being.1 This account has been criticized more or less explicitly
by a number of commentators, including Charles Ramond.2 Rather
than providing a defense of Deleuze on this specific point, which I
have done elsewhere,3 what I propose to do in this chapter is provide
an account of the role played by joyful passive affections in these
dynamic changes or transformations by distinguishing Deleuzes
account of this role from that offered by one of his more explicit
critics on this issue, Pierre Macherey.4 An appreciation of the role
played by joyful passive affections in this context is crucial to un-
derstanding how Deleuzes interpretation of Spinoza is implicated
in his broader philosophical project of constructing a philosophy
of difference. The outcome is a position that, like Badiou in the
51
52 SI M ON DUF F Y
previous chapter, rules out intellect in potentiality but maintains a

role for the joyful passive affects in the development of adequate ideas.
The Distinction between Joyful Passive

Affections and Sad Passive Affections
In his interpretation of Spinozas theory of relations in Expression-
ism in Philosophy, Deleuze assigns a specific role to joyful passions.
They are characterized as a significant determinant in the dynamic
changes or transformations of the characteristic relations of finite
existing modes. The theme of joyful passions is pivotal in distin-
guishing Deleuzes reading of Spinozas theory of relations from
that offered by Macherey in Introduction lEthique de Spinoza, la
cinquime partie.
While discussing the General Definition of the Affects at the end
of Part III of the Ethics, Macherey formulates the problem that effec-
tively distinguishes his interpretation of this aspect of the Ethics from
that of Deleuze.5 He raises the following question: Can the soul be
completely active, without at all being passive, or does it rather find
itself permanently placed between the two extremes of passivity and
activity, following regimes which make it lean sometimes to the side
of activity, sometimes to that of passivity? And then what are the
thresholds which swing one of these regimes into the other?6 Each
of the two interpreters approaches this problem differently.
Macherey and Deleuze are in accord with regard to the fixity
of singular essence, but their interpretations differ with regard to
the transformations of the characteristic relations determinative
of singular things. According to Macherey, the affective life of a
singular thing is constituted by its ideas or passions, which are ex-
pressed as an uninterrupted affective flux.7 The transformations
of the characteristic relations of a singular thing correspond to the
varying degrees to which the uninterrupted affective flux hinders
or limits the active expression of a modes power to act within the
range of a maximum and a minimum. All a modes power to act is
expressed, however, according to the uninterrupted affective flux; it
is simultaneously expressed both actively and passively. The passive
affections, or the passions, are the mark of a negation, and inversely,
the active affects, or actions, are the active expression, or affirma-
tion, of a singular things power to act. Macherey considers passion,
THE JOYFUL PASSIONS IN SPINOZAS THEORY OF RELATIONS 53
with its logical mark of negativity, to be that which is found most

naturally in man. The question for Macherey is therefore to know
whether man can ever completely escape this logic and engage in
actions which are not marred by such a limitation?8
Deleuze, however, considers the transformations of the relations
characteristic of modal existence to implicate a modes capacity to
be affected. A modes capacity to be affected is constituted by its
active affections. Passive affections, on the contrary, function only
to limit its capacity to be affected. This limit functions within the
range of a maximum and minimum; that is, a modes capacity to
be affected, which is affirmed by its conatus as the expression of its
power to act, is open to variation within the general limits of this
range.9 According to Deleuze, the variation of a modes power to act
is directly limited by the passive affections to which it is subjected,
rather than proportionally limited, as Macherey proposes.
The difference between Machereys and Deleuzes reading of
Spinozas theory of relations rests with their respective interpreta-
tions of the role of passive affections. According to Macherey, they
remain an integral part of the existence of a singular thing, being
expressed by its conatus even though hindering its capacity to ac-
tively, or more perfectly, express its fixed power to act. According to
Deleuze, on the contrary, only active affections function integrally
as part of modal existence. Passive affections function rather to
limit the existence of a finite mode, that is, of the active affections
constitutive of its capacity to be affected, which is affirmed by its
conatus as the expression of its power to act.
This, however, does not exhaust the differences between their
respective interpretations of passive affections but rather prepares for
a further distinction. Deleuze argues that the opposition of actions
and passions should not conceal the other opposition that constitutes
the second principle of Spinozism: that of joyful passive affections
and sad passive affections.10 Spinoza first introduces the notions of
joy and sadness in the Ethics II, P11S, by making explicit reference to
them as passions: By joy, therefore, I shall understand in what follows
that passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection. And by
sadness, that passion by which it passes to a lesser perfection. The
other reference that Deleuze cites is from the Ethics III, P58, where
Spinoza introduces joys and desires whose active character sets them
54 S I M ON DUF F Y
apart from those joys and desires that are passions because they are
determined by external encounters. Spinoza writes, Apart from the
joy and desire that are passions, there are other affects of joy and
desire that are related to us insofar as we act. These are the only two
explicit references to passions which are joys to be found in the Ethics.
In Expressionism in Philosophy, Deleuze characterizes these joyful pas-
sions as joyful passive affections, and it is from this starting point,
with joyful passive affections, that Deleuze begins his account of the
transformations of the characteristic relations of finite existing modes.
Macherey concedes that the notion of a joyful passion is not
in fact entirely absent from Spinozas text, at least at first glance.11
However, when he offers an account of the transformations of the
characteristic relations of singular things, the notion of a joyful pas-
sion does not retain the same significance that Deleuze assigns it in
Expressionism in Philosophy. In fact, joyful passions are implicated
quite differently in Machereys reading of the Ethics. However, before
developing Machereys account of what he calls passionate joys,
the role played by joyful passive affections in Deleuzes account of
the transformations of the characteristic relations of finite existing
modes needs to be explicated.
The Role of Joyful Passive Affections in

Deleuzes Account of Modal Existence
Deleuze actually prefigures his discussion of joyful passive affec-
tions at the beginning of chapter 15 of Expressionism in Philosophy,
when he argues that our passive joy is and must remain a passion:
it is not explained by our power of action, but it involves a higher
degree of this power.12 What does Deleuze understand by correlat-
ing a passion with an increase in a modes power to act? This would
seem to contradict his concept of the role of passive affections in
the determination of a finite existing mode, that is, insofar as they
function solely to limit its existence. This suggestion of a contradic-
tion is reinforced by the fact that Deleuze follows his introduction
of the distinction between joyful passive affections and sad passive
affections by the statement that one increases our power, the other
diminishes it.13
Deleuze seems to be arguing that although joyful passive affec-
tions are passions, they function more or less actively and therefore
can be seen to occupy an intermediate place between passions and

actions, or in effect, to mediate between them. However, a closer
reading of Expressionism in Philosophy reveals that a different logic is
being developed, one according to which joyful passive affections
mediate not between active and passive affections but rather solely
between different active affections. To explicate the mechanism by
means of which this logic operates, it is necessary to determine
exactly what the relation is, then, between a joyful passive affection
and the increase in power to which Deleuze relates it.
Deleuze suggests that we come closer to our power of action
insofar as we are affected by the joy of a joyful passive affection.14
He argues that passive joy is produced by an object that agrees with
us, and whose power increases our power of action, but of which
we do not yet have an adequate idea.15 However, he maintains that
it never increases enough for us to become the adequate cause of
the affections that exercise our capacity to be affected.16 The initial
affect is a passion because we are affected from the outside by an
external object; however, this object agrees with our nature and,
consequently, is not harmful to us. We therefore do not experience
the passive affection as the passion of sadness because our power to
act is not diminished by the encounter. One would expect a feeling
of ambivalence to be experienced because at this stage, our perfec-
tion has been neither augmented nor diminished. Yet, insofar as
the external body agrees or has something in common with our
nature, the potential for the combination of the power to act of the
external body with our own, and therefore the increase in power that
this would involve, promotes the feeling of joy that allows the overall
affect to be described as a joyful passive affection. What Deleuze un-
derstands by an object that agrees or has something in common
with our nature is one with which we can be further integrated.
Each relation agrees solely insofar as it can be further integrated in
relation to another, thus generating a new, more composite relation.
Therefore the concept of finite existing modes or individuals whose
natures agree corresponds to the potential for their complication
or integration in a more composite relation. Insofar as the effect of
this external body on our own is experienced as an affection that
is explained by the external body, it remains an inadequate idea of
the imagination, and therefore a passion. To distinguish passive joys
56 SI M ON DUF F Y
from active joys, Deleuze argues that an active joy we produce by

ourselves, it flows from our power of action itself, follows from an
adequate idea in us.17
According to Deleuze, joyful passive affections are passions
because they limit the expression of our power to act and yet cor-
respond to a feeling of joy because they are somehow implicated
in an increase of that power. This can only work if joyful passive
affections are understood to function at the limit imposed by pas-
sive affections. The joy of a joyful passive affection can therefore
be understood insofar as it affirms that limit while simultaneously
announcing the potential for positive transformation, that is, the
surpassing of the limit or an increase in the power to act, rather than
functioning solely as a limit marking the point beyond which a finite
existing mode ceases to exist, as do sad passive affections.
Only to the extent that this initially inadequate relation results
in the production of active joys, and therefore in an increase in
our power of acting, are joyful passive affections implicated in the
transformative process. Joyful passive affections indicate a partial or
inadequate idea of something common to both our own body and
an external body that affects it. They indicate the potential for an
increase in our power to act but are not themselves directly related
to that increase in power. It is rather the active affections that fol-
low from joyful passive affections that are directly associated with
the increase in power. The suggestion of a contradiction between
joyful passive affections as passions and the increase in our power
associated with them is therefore unfounded. Deleuzes use of the
concept of joyful passive affections should rather be understood to
be the articulation of the process of transformation, or increase in
power, that actually takes place in the generation of active joy by
means of the accumulation of joyful passive affections.
The Simplest of Common Notions

Spinoza maintains that the ideas that we generally have of ourselves,
and of external bodies, are only inadequate ideas or passive affec-
tions that indicate an encounter between some external body and
our own. A joyful passive affection, because it is a passion, is always
the result of an external cause and is thus always indicated by an
inadequate idea. However, because it is a joyful passive affection, it
indicates that there is something common to an external body and

our own or that it has a nature compatible, or potentially convergent,
with our own.
According to Deleuze, the experience of a joyful passive affec-
tion can induce the formation of the corresponding common no-
tion. The first common notions formed by an individual are those
that apply to its body and to another whose nature agrees directly
with its own and therefore affects its body with joy. When our mind
forms an idea of what is common to the external body and our own,
it forms a common notion. The joyful affection then ceases to be
passive and becomes active. By indicating that there is something
common, that there is a connection between the bodies, a joyful
passive affection can initiate the formation of a common notion. A
common notion is an adequate idea of the relation, which therefore
incorporates the cause of the affection within the very idea of that
affection. Deleuze maintains that Spinoza describes an affection that
expresses its cause in this way as no longer passive but active. The
joy of a joyful passive affection no longer indicates an inadequate
idea of an object that agrees with us but the necessarily adequate
idea of what is common to that object and ourselves. An adequate
idea of the affection is formed when the cause of the affection is at-
tached to what is common to the bodies involved, that is, when the
potential for the integration of their natures is actualized. This is the
leap, of which Deleuze speaks, from inadequate to adequate ideas,
from joyful passive affections to active joys, from passions to actions.
The Relation between Passivity and Activity in the Affective Life

Macherey does not agree with the division of passive affections into
joyful passive affections and sad passive affections. In The Encounter
with Spinoza, he claims rather bluntly that for Spinoza all passions,
without exception, are sadeven those that are or appear to be joys.
Or that they are all ultimately sad, in a sort of passionate entropy.18
Macherey distinguishes what he considers Spinoza to be referring
to in the Ethics II, P11S, and the Ethics III, P58, as passionate joys
from that which Deleuze characterizes as joyful passive affections.
Contrary to what he considers to be Deleuzes point of view, Ma-
cherey maintains that passionate joys, which are in fact imaginary
joys linked to encounters with external bodies, cannot be assembled
58 S I M ON DUF F Y
into a coherent stable group, but rather tend inevitably to conflict,

tending not towards composition but towards decomposition.19
In the Ethics III, P17, Spinoza introduces the theme of the fluctuatio
animi in the case of a sadness that doubles as a joy. Macherey explains
this case in the following manner: Spinoza starts by presenting a
sad affect attached ordinarily to an object ... then he shows how, by
contamination, because the object in question appears to resemble
another object which ordinarily gives us joy, this joy is artificially
transferred onto the first object, which is then the cause by ac-
cident of this affect.20 Therefore the fluctuatio animi permanently
exposes the joy associated with this affect to the risk of reversing
to sadness. This is why Macherey considers all passions, includ-
ing joys that are passions, to have a sad destiny, which cannot
somehow be transformed into something active, which Macherey
accuses Deleuze of attempting to do with joyful passive affections.
Macherey maintains that a joyful passive affection, as characterized
by Deleuze in Expressionism in Philosophy, is a contradiction in terms,
corresponding at best to a passing, unstable and literally non-viable
state of our constitution.21
The first common notion that we can have, according to Macherey,
is amor erga Deum, whereas for Deleuze, the first common notions
that we can have are the simplest common notions, which represent
what is common to our body and to certain external bodies by which
we are effected. Macherey does not deny that there are the simple
common notions of which Deleuze speaks; however, he does deny
that from them we can deduce adequate ideas without first having
attained the love toward God, which he therefore considers to be
the first common notion capable of leading to adequate ideas. Ma-
cherey considers the love toward God to establish the basis for the
regulation of the affective life and therefore to be the first step in the
production of the second kind of knowledge, whereas for Deleuze,
the love toward God represents one step in the transition from the
second kind of knowledge to the third kind of knowledge. The idea
of God as the cause of all things, that is, the general common no-
tion of the love toward God, is, for Macherey, the primary point of
reference for adequate ideas. All adequate ideas without exception
therefore include, by means of the love toward God, the idea of God
as their cause. According to Deleuze, however, adequate ideas are
constituted locally by means of the simplest of common notions or

the shared knowledge that each involved idea or body is the com-
mon cause of the adequate idea. An adequate idea for Deleuze is
therefore determined in direct relation to the bodies or ideas that
interact with one another as causes of the adequate idea, without
necessarily requiring reference to the general common notion of the
love toward God. It is on the basis of this argument for the deduc-
tion of adequate ideas from simple common notions that Deleuzes
understanding of joyful active affections is distinguishable from the
account of passionate joys offered by Macherey.
A Joyful Passive Affection Can Be Reversed to Sadness

The difference between the passionate joys of Macherey and the
joyful passive affections of Deleuze is brought out effectively by the
discussion of the fluctuatio animi in The Encounter with Spinoza.
In fact, Macherey argues that the fluctuatio animi ... completely
undermines the notion of joyful passions presented by Deleuze.22
Macherey understands a passionate joy to be a joy by accident,
that is, a sadness that is doubled as a joy, and he maintains that
Spinoza chose this case, and not that where a joy is impaired by
becoming tinged with bitterness, to determine the theme of the
fluctuatio animi.23 The joy of a passionate joy is a joy whose cause
remains unknown; it is therefore associated with a passion and, ac-
cording to Macherey, must reverse to being sad. Macherey contends
that Deleuzes interpretation of a joyful passion as a joyful passive
affection presents a joy that does not reverse as expected, which leads
him to ask if there is in joy something stronger and more stable
than in sadness, which protects it against this risk of reversal?24 Ma-
cherey can be understood to be suggesting with this question that
Deleuzes response would be yes, because for Deleuze, the sadness
of a sad passive affection simply limits the existence of an existing
finite mode, whereas the joy of a joyful passive affection not only
affirms the limit but simultaneously announces the potential for
positive transformation, that is, to go beyond the limit imposed by
the passive affections in general. In this way, Deleuze does seem to
interpret joy as being stronger and more stable than sadness, which
could therefore protect it against the risk of reversal. Macherey
responds to the question by arguing that the extremely condensed
60 SI M ON DUF F Y
way in which the content of this question is exposed in proposition

17 and in its scholium, only permits the question to be posed, but
hardly gives any means to respond to it.25 In fact, Spinoza only gives
the example of a sadness that doubles as a joy in his explication of
the fluctuatio animi.26 Macherey therefore argues that such a harm-
ful pleasure, whether inflicted or suffered, would clearly for Spinoza
be a passion imbued with fluctuatio animi, ineluctably producing a
negative legacy of sadness.27 By referring to a joyful passion as a
harmful pleasure, or simply a sadness that doubles as a joy, Mach-
erey reduces the Deleuzian concept of a joyful passive affection to
that of a passionate joy.
Deleuze, on the contrary, considers the ethical view to provide
a means of responding to the question raised by Macherey. Deleuze
does not deny that passionate joys, as described by Macherey, are
experienced by finite existing modes, nor that such a joy can be
doubled or reversed to sadness and therefore be lost to the fluctuatio
animi. And Deleuze in no way guarantees that every joyful passive
affection will always produce an active joy. According to Deleuze, a
joyful passive affection may always ... be interrupted by destruction,
or even simply by the sadness of the loved object itself.28 In other
words, insofar as a joyful passive affection is a passion, its cause can
be confused with another external cause or image of an object or
body, which effaces the joy and renders the joyful passive affection
sad. There is therefore nothing inherently stable or coherent in a
joyful passive affection that stops it from falling prey to the fluctuatio
animi. Instead, Deleuze is arguing that despite the difficulty in distin-
guishing a passionate joy from a joyful passive affection, the joy of
a joyful passive affection can be isolated before it becomes prey to
the fluctuatio animi and in this way contributes to the formation of
a common notion. Macherey does not at all agree with Deleuze on
this point. Macherey argues, on the contrary, that nothing can turn a
passionate joy into an action because, being a passion, it necessarily
tends toward a fluctuatio animi; that is, for him, all passions without
exception ... [tend] towards a fluctuatio animi.29
Deleuzes concept of a joyful passive affection is the concept of a
joy that can be reversed to sadness or, conversely, that can contribute
to the formation of common notions. The uncertainty of a joyful
passive affection is carried over into the common notions that can
be formed from it when Deleuze maintains that the isolation of a
joyful passive affection does not bypass the need for common no-
tions to be formed, and formed either more or less easily, and so
being more or less common to different minds.30 Macherey is in
agreement with Deleuze on this point when he writes that that
which distinguishes the souls of different men, is the place occupied
by those common notions in relation to other ideas, inadequate
ideas.31 However, the theme of joyful passions remains one of the
points around which their respective interpretations of Spinozas
theory of relations diverge.
Deleuzes position can be presented as follows. According to
Deleuze, the natural situation of our existence as human beings
is such that we are filled with inadequate ideas and passive affec-
tions. This is so because, according to Spinoza, we are continu-
ously affected by external bodies (Ethics II, P47S). Before we can
form common notions, we must learn to distinguish sad passions
from joyful passions, what Deleuze describes as a starting point
in joyful passions.32 Sad passions are inadequate ideas that arise
from the experience of random encounters with external bodies,
whereas joyful passions are inadequate ideas that arise from the
encounters with external bodies that have something in common
with our own. The immediate idea that we have of these external
bodies that have something in common with our own is partial and
therefore imaginary. Insofar as this encounter is associated with the
experience of joy, we can form an idea of there being something
common to the external body and our own. We desire to increase
this initial joy by striving to determine or to form an idea of what it
is that is specifically common to our body and the external body by
means of the simplest of common notions. Our chances of achieving
this, which is in no way guaranteed by the joyful passive affection,
are improved to the extent that we relate or imagine several things
at once as similarly common to our body and the external body,
thereby increasing the number of affections associated with the joy
of the joyful passive affectionwhat Deleuze describes as the ac-
cumulation of joyful passive affections.33 Although joyful passive
affections are inadequate ideas of the imagination and, as such, involve
62 SI M ON DUF F Y
privation of the knowledge of their cause, they are at the same time
affections that involve, or implicate, that cause.34 The imagination
is composed of inadequate ideas that, through an understanding of
their cause, by means of the mechanism of joyful passive affections
and the simplest of common notions, may be transformed into
adequate ideas, thereby constituting reason. In this way, the joyful
passive affection is the mechanism by which the mind moves from
an inadequate idea to an adequate idea and by which the body moves
from experiencing a passion to an action. Deleuze argues therefore
that the active joys that flow from common notions find as it were
their occasional causes in passive affections of joy,35 and according
to Deleuze, the only way of reaching an adequate idea is by means
of the mechanism of joyful passive affections.
Notes
1 Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin
Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1992).
2 Charles Ramond, Qualit et quantit dans la philosophie de Spinoza
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995), 189231.
3 See Simon Duffy, The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity, and
Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel, and Deleuze (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate,
2006), chap. 6.
4 Pierre Macherey, Introduction lEthique de Spinoza, la troisime partie
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995). All citations quoted
from this text are my translations from the French. See also Pierre
Macherey, The Encounter with Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin, in
Deleuze: A Critical Reader, ed. Paul Patton, 13961 (Oxford: Blackwell,
1996).
5 Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1,
trans. Edwin Curley, 408617 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1985).
6 Macherey, Introduction lEthique de Spinoza, 20.
7 Ibid., 121.
8 Ibid., 71.
9 Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, 225.
10 Ibid., 246.
11 Macherey, Introduction lEthique de Spinoza, 153

13 The whole passage reads, The opposition of actions and passions
should not conceal the other opposition that constitutes the second
principle of Spinozism: that of joyful passive affections and sad
passive affections. One increases our power, the other diminishes it. We
come closer to our power of action insofar as we are affected by
joy(Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, 246; emphasis added).
14 Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, p. 246.
15 Ibid., 274.
16 Ibid., 241.
17 Ibid., 274.
19 Ibid., 154.
20 Ibid., 16263.
21 Ibid., 154.
22 Ibid., 156.
23 Ibid., 166.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Spinoza, Ethics III, P17: If we imagine that a thing which usually
affects us with an affect of Sadness is like another which usually
affects us with an equally great affect of Joy, we shall hate it and at
the same time love it. Ethics III, P17S: This constitution of the
Mind which arises from two contrary affects is called vacillation of
mind [ fluctuatio animi], which is therefore related to the affect as
doubt is to the imagination (see Ethics II, P44S); nor do vacillation
of mind and doubt differ from one another except in degree. But it
should be noted that in the preceding Proposition I have deduced
these vacillations of mind from causes which are the cause through
themselves of one affect and the accidental cause of the other. I have
done this because in this way they could more easily be deduced
from what has gone before, not because I deny that vacillations of
mind for the most part arise from an object which is the efficient
cause of each affect.
64 SI M ON DUF F Y

31 Pierre Macherey, Introduction lEthique de Spinoza, la seconde partie
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1997), 291.
33 Ibid., 283.
34 For an account of this involvement according to the logic of
different/ciation, see Duffy, Logic of Expression, chaps. 68.
4
Spinozas Ass
justin clemens
Clement made irresolution a policy. He carried thought to

excess and mistook it as a substitute for action instead of
its guide. He could find a hundred reasons for the decision,
and a hundred against it; it was as if Buridans ass sat on the
papal throne.
Will Durant, The Renaissance
The Montagne thus decided the issue. It found itself in the

position of Buridans ass, not, indeed, between two bundles
of hay with the problem of deciding which was the more at-
tractive, but between two showers of blows with the problem
of deciding which was the harder. On the one hand, there was
the fear of Changarnier; on the other, the fear of Bonaparte.
It must be confessed that the position was no heroic one.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte
Spinozas Passing Remark

Proposition 49 in Part II, Nature and Origin of the Mind, of Benedict
de Spinozas Ethics reads as follows: There is in the mind no volition
or affirmation and negation, save that which an idea, inasmuch as it is
an idea, involves. As we know, for Spinoza, there is no absolute or
free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause,
which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by
another cause, and so on to infinity (Ethics II, P48).1 It is only the
weakness of our imaginations overwhelming our reason that leads
65
66 JUSTI N CLE M ENS
us to consider things, whether in respect to the future or the past,

as contingent (Ethics II, P44C1). As such, will and understanding
are one and the same (Ethics II, P49C), not independent faculties
but bound up with particular ideas, which, as particulars, cannot
permit the idealizing division of the mind.
Whereas for Descartes, there is a crucial distinction between
apprehending a fact and affirming its truth, this very distinction is
one of the targets of Spinozas critique. Error cannot be dependent
on the will for Spinoza, as John Cottingham reminds us: Firstly,
the will is not distinct from the intellect; secondly, the will is not
endowed with the kind of freedom that Descartes postulated.2
Rather Spinozas famous dictum about the understanding should
induce us to affirm that the understanding is integrally affirmation.
Rather than considering will as an infinite faculty that mimics that
of a projected, transcendent God, Spinoza refuses the very traces
of such a division for his ontology, which integrally depends on the
constrained affirmation of the true.
This radical fusion of the will and understanding in the face of
particular ideas by Spinoza immediately leads him to entertain in
the scholium to the corollary of Ethics II, P49, possible objections to
his new doctrine. Is it not the case that the will has a wider scope
than the understanding (i.e., that we can assent to things that we do
not perceive), that we can suspend our judgments before assenting
to things that we do perceive, and that we do not need any greater
power than for affirming, that what is false is true? Finally, Spinoza
says, it may be objected, if man does not act from free will, what will
happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced as in the case
of Buridans ass? Will he perish of hunger and thirst? It is this appar-
ently passing invocation of the sophism that is of interest here.3
The canonical scenario of Buridans ass is deceptively simple. A
starving ass wanders into a barnyard, where it is confronted with two
equally appealing bales of hay. Because these bales are identical in
all respects (size, shape, smell, distance), the poor creature is unable
to make a decision and starves to death between them. Spinozas
invocation of the ass emerges at a crucial point in his argument and
directs us toward an entire sheaf of questions. Is such a state of per-
fect equilibrium actually possible? If so, does the very possibility of
decision considered as an act of free will itself necessarily founder?
SPINOZAS ASS 67
Is there even an adequate idea of such a suspension? To answer such

questions, let us first turn to some key elements of the mazy discus-
sions by commentators of this scenario before returning to Spinoza
and to the specifically political implications of his account.
In the Name of Nominalism

First of all, it seems that Spinoza has misattributed this paradox to
the French scholastic Jean Buridan (ca. 12951356), a professor at the
University of Paris and one of the key figures in the introduction
of impetus physics into medieval Europe.4 The paradox, however,
has never been located as such in Buridans own extant published
works. As Peter King notes:
Buridan is best-known to philosophers for the example of Buri-

dans Ass, starving to death between two equidistant and equally
tempting bales of hay, who appears in Spinoza, Ethica II, scholium
to prop. 49. But this poor fragment of Buridans great reputation
is as apocryphal as his supposed amorous adventures with the
Queen of France, famous from Franois Villons poem La [sic]
testament, or his founding of the University of Vienna: Buridans
ass is not to be found in Buridan, though his examples are stud-
ded with asses.5
In fact, forms of the sophism are much older than Buridan; none of
them have asses, either. Authorities often trace its origins to Aris-
totles critique of Anaximanders cosmology, where Aristotle posits
the immobilization of a hungry and thirsty man caught between
food and drinkand so its abiding link with Buridan seems now to
be substantially due to Spinozas own misattribution.
Second, this paradox has been extraordinarily insistent in the his-
tory of thought, as Nicholas Reschers reconstruction shows. Versions
of the paradox can be found in Anaximander, Aristotle, Al-Ghazali,
Averroes, Aquinas, Peter John Olivi, Dante, Duns Scotus, William
of Ockham, Khodja Zadeh, Rabelais, Montaigne, Thomas Gataker,
Spinoza, Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Thomas Reid, Kant, Schopenhauer,
Augustus de Morgan, and Lewis Carroll, among many others.6 Ac-
counts of the paradox persist today, not just in analytic philosophys
lemon-squeezing discussions of the complexities of decision, but
also in disciplines such as politics, marketing, and economics. Joseph

Schumpeter, for example, calls the ass perfectly rational, and the
ass is often belabored as an example by Amartya Sen.7 I will return
to this phenomenon in a moment.
Third, and despite this insistence, it is most often the case that
Buridans ass (or its alleged equivalents) appears in passing, as a
suggestive figure or handy example, before being banished again in
favor of other arguments, other figures. Its insistent recurrence is
thus notable for its resolutely marginal status.
Fourth, although there are indeed an extraordinary number of
variants of the scenario usually considered functionally or logically
identical by commentators (e.g., a hungry and thirsty man equidistant
between food and drink, a man choosing between two dates, a cord
equally strong at all points), the figure of the ass in the canonical,
post-Spinozan version of this fable evidently has a broad and sus-
tained appeal. Despite, then, the clear situational influences on the
specificities of the scenario, whether these are linked to the context
of intraphilosophical argumentation or public demonstration, there
has, in modernity, been something about the ass that particularly
fires the philosophical imagination. In a way, this fourth point links
the others: the presence of an ass renders the scenario at once al-
legorical and analogical.
It is rendered allegorical because the ass clearly functions as
a parodic figure of sovereignty: King Ass. Just as in the fables of
Aesop or La Fontaine, Scholasticism or Nietzsche, the ass itself has
often provided an exemplary conceptual figure for thought.8 The
monotheistic religions and classical myth, philosophy, politics, and
literature establish a tradition that runs to the present, for which a
few choice examples should suffice to designate here. As the arbiter
of a musical competition between Pan and Apollo, Midas gave the
palm to Pan, whereon Apollo punished the hapless judge by giving
him asss ears. Antisthenes allegedly asked the Athenians why they
didnt vote in donkeys as horses when they were prepared to elect
candidates who bore as much resemblance to generals as donkeys
did to horses. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle quotes Heraclitus
to the effect that donkeys prefer rubbish to gold, which has usually
been understood either as underlining the asses inability to make
proper evaluations or, quite to the contrary, as showing that evaluation
SPINOZAS ASS 69
itself is relative, differing between creatures on the basis of use

or taste.9 In Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream, the fairy
queen Titania is punished by her husband, Oberon, by having her
fall in love with the hapless weaver Bottom, whose head has been
transformed into that of an ass. Heinrich Heine, the great German
poet and friend of Karl Marx, was a big fan of asses, which appear
throughout his work.10
These allegorical or parabolic aspects of the sophism have ana-
logical correlates as well. In addition to its allegorical qualities, the
scenario constitutes a model for staging the disjunction of law and
its application, or to put this another way, it proposes that the transi-
tion between deliberation and decision is in fact obscure and is itself
in need of explanation. In such cases, the scenario functions as an
emblem of what is regularly called choice without preference;
that is, it poses the problem of a decision that can be founded on
no objective criteria to propose, further, whether a decision is really
at stake. It moreover foregrounds the problematic links between
reason and action, the necessity of indifference and the liberty
of indifference. This, once again, ties it directly to the problem of
sovereignty in political thought.
In other words, Buridans ass poses as an analogical conundrum,
in the most reduced possible form, the problem of how to account
for the fact that people can die for a principle that isnt a proposition
or that has no possible propositional or empirical justification. Yet it
is also the case that the problem of life that this scenario pinpoints
has often not been seen by the tradition of commentary as indeed
a real problem. What it also underlines, in the absence of any social
reference, is the central place uncertainty, undecidability, indeci-
sion, and indecisiveness play, not just in a psychological or logical
frame, but in a political one as well. As Walter Benjamin puts it in
a famous passage:
The antithesis between the power of the ruler and his capacity to
rule led to a feature peculiar to the Trauerspiel which is, however,
only apparently a generic feature and which can be illuminated
only against the background of the theory of sovereignty. This is
the indecisiveness of the tyrant. The prince, who is responsible for
making the decision to proclaim the state of emergency, reveals,
at the first opportunity, that he is almost incapable of making a

decision. Just as compositions with restful lighting are virtually
unknown in mannerist painting, so it is that the theatrical figures
of this epoch always appear in the harsh light of their changing
resolve. What is conspicuous about them is not so much the
sovereignty evident in the stoic turns of phrase, as the sheer
arbitrariness of a constantly shifting emotional storm in which
the figures of Lohenstein especially sway about like torn and
flapping banners.11
Benjaminwho is here, not coincidentally, speaking about a peculiar

form of modern Baroque dramathereby stages the face-off between
personal capacity and position as a key aspect of the problem of
political tyranny. The sovereign is an ass that cannot decide, and this
is, therefore, more than an allegory: it speaks directly to problems
of will, reason, thought, decision, act, consequences, law, life, and
death. The perennial philosophical problems of the indiscernible
and the undecidable are therefore also integrally practical problems,
problems of and for pragmatics and politics.
In other words, the paradoxes of Buridans ass propose very
serious and very central problems to thought. Indeed, philosophy
as a discourse and the phenomenon of paradox are foundationally,
historically, conceptually, and pragmatically indissociable. There is
and can be no philosophy without some relation to paradox and
paradoxes; the latter consistently function as an inspiration, gateway,
motor, and limit to philosophy. As Gilles Deleuze insists, the force
of paradoxes is that they are not contradictory; they rather allow us
to be present at the genesis of the contradiction.12 Paradoxes are
often deliberately concocted by logicians and philosophers to direct
attention toward the constitutive failure of reason to think through its
own presuppositions, consequences, and limits or, at the very least,
toward the pretensions of certain forms of rationality. One needs
to think only of Epimenidess liar paradox or Zenos paradoxes of
motion to get a sense of just how untimelyin every sense of the
wordsuch paradoxes are. They arrive out of time, as a shock or
surprise, and compel a response that needs, at the very least, to have
something novel about it. Such paradoxes are also untimely insofar
as they transmit an atemporal or transsituational force, retaining
SPINOZAS ASS 71
their import for thinkers in wildly different times and places. The
proposed solutions, moreover, invariably produce new problems, often
of an entirely unexpected kind, and these new problems exemplar-
ily take the form of new or adapted paradoxes. To put this another
way, paradoxes force philosophy to rethink the stakes of truth and
the true, reason, and being. As such, paradoxes have regularly led to
major transformations of the philosophical field itself.
It seems to me that this is also the case for Spinoza, for whom the
ass exemplifies a certain sort of post-Cartesian conundrumwhich
forces him to rethink the nature of ontology, reason, and the political
at once. Indeed, Spinozas genius is evident in his refusal to treat the
problems raised by Buridans ass as simply empty, a game, or an easily
resolved dilemma; at the same time, he ultimately considers whatever
demonstrative force the scenario has as founded on a confusion. But
let us first examine the stakes of the sophism in more detail.
Pandering to the Ass

I have already briefly sketched the key elements in the drama of
Buridans ass, which rest, as should now be evident, on the abyssal
nature of accounting for decision. The asss simplicity is, in other
words, extremely complex. What are some of the complexities of this
little fable, and what solutions have been proffered to resolve it?
Above all, Buridans ass is the most reduced form of a paradox
of decision. The ass has to decide or it will die. It cannot hold off
forever; there is an urgency to make the decision. The ass knows all
the variables in the situation precisely (i.e., there is no ignorance or
lack of knowledge at stake). Yet, if it is truly making a decisionand
not simply driven by (causal) necessitythen it must truly find some
basis for such a decision, that is, some kind of difference, however
infinitesimal, in the objects. So the sophism presents compulsion to
decide, urgency to decide, total knowledge of the variables, and a
requirement to find a motivation for the decision.
If this scenario may seem to have inextricably psychological
overtonesdifferent versions hinge on the different relations possible
between sense, desire, reason, and volition and emphasize differently
the asss immobilization through such different affects as anxiety or
confusionthe history of the scenario shows that it has also been
brought to bear on problems in cosmology and logic.13 In fact, one
72 JU STI N CLE M ENS
of the suggestive aspects of Buridans ass is that it is precisely an

instance in which the problem of the transition between decision
and action, fact and interpretation, proves to be an uncircumvent-
able problem, no matter the conceptual framework in which it arises.
And once Buridans ass or one of its avatars has arisen, then some
solution clearly has to be found.
One favored kind of solution can be found in Mark Skousen and
Kenna C. Taylors Puzzles and Paradoxes in Economics, in which they
claim, against Schumpeter, that:
In fact, there is no animal that could be less rational. From a logical

point of view, there are actually three choices, the third being to
starve where he is. Clearly, this third choice of starvation will be
ranked lower in the donkeys revealed preferences than the other
two on the donkeys value scale. If both left and right bales are
equally preferable, the donkey will allow pure chance to decide
on either one.14
Note the use of the word clearly, which shows that Skousen and
Taylor have clearly failed to take the force of the paradox properly.
For the paradox suggests that in the taking of a decision, there is
either no clear ranking possible or, when a calculus can (and therefore
should) be applied, there is no real decision to be madeother than
to apply the calculus, of course. But the possibility of application of
any calculus is precisely what is put in question by the ass.
In a similar but not identical vein, Amartya Sen makes a distinction
between maximization and optimization, the former involving
selecting for a better, the latter for the best. Sen can thus write:
Buridans Ass, as a vigorous optimiser and a great believer in com-

plete orderings, could not choose either haystack (since neither
was shown to be clearly the best), and it thus died of starvation.
It starved to death since it could not rank the two haystacks, but
of course each would have generated a better consequence than
starvation. Even if the donkey failed to rank the two haystacks,
it would have made sensegood costbenefit sensefor it to
choose either rather than neither. Costbenefit analysis does need
maximization, but not completeness or optimisation.15
SPINOZAS ASS 73
This solution also presupposes that the decision here is not between
the objects themselves but between the ways in which objects can be
ranked. The possibility of discriminating between ways to decide
proves crucial here; that is, if the objects cannot be distinguished,
they can be taken as a class in themselves, and one can then decide
about the class itself, as now opposed to another class. Moreover, it
suggests that if there is any decision to be made by the ass, an integral
component of the decision to be made is that there is no decision
to be made at the level of presentation itself and that it is precisely
the couplet of the indifference of the objects and the necessity to
choose one of them that forces a metadecision of some kind (in this
case, that maximization is better than optimization). The real deci-
sion would not then be a choice between objects but an acceptance
of the ungroundedness of such a (non)-choice, the recognition that
the selection cannot be totally ordered, and a de facto commitment to
a pragmatic selection that does not make any assertions about the
specificity of the object chosen over the other. This solution basi-
cally proposes that better is better than best. Note that this proposed
solution introduces the motif of a radical nonsimplicity of decision;
rather the process of decision must itself involve a multiplicity of
shifts between different cognitive registers.
In yet other accounts, the fundamental matrix of the dispute is
reduced to the following: either affirmation of necessity or recourse
to auxiliaries (to which a rationalist might respond, then there is no
decision to be made); either the binding together of necessity and
decision or recognition of their irremediable separation (in which
case, there is no decision to be made, or decision is indistinguish-
able from pure spontaneity, in which case, there is no decision to
be made); we then desultorily conclude with either a rationalism
of the concept or a pragmatism of the world. So we find that, for
certain rationalists, there is no real decision in the asss case, or that
such a decision is really ungrounded: it cannot be told apart from
pure chance on the objective side or from irrationality (madness,
pure spontaneity, sovereign exceptionality) on the subjective side.
By the way, it is then no surprise that Jacques Derrida, in his own
resolute hesitations, often cites Kierkegaards The Instant of Deci-
sion Is Madness.16
Either way, the subject vanishes, at the very moment that knowing
74 JU STI N CLEM E NS
and deciding, cause (hunger) and motivation (reason for deciding),

come apart. Into the bargain, the problem of the incommensurability
of indiscernibles arises: it is not just that the bales are identical (they
may just as well be differences-without-distinction or whose distinc-
tions are themselves unevaluable) but that indiscernibility must be
excluded to ensure the grounded application of a calculus of any
kind (this is why Leibniz argues so strenuously for the principle of
the identity of indiscernibles). Hence the problem of contingency
emerges as indissociable from the problem of decision.17
For certain pragmatists, as we know, the concept of decision is
necessarily fuzzy (perhaps to be subjected to a Wittgensteinian-type
language-game analysis) or is to be supplemented by auxiliary means.
One might discern a kind of spectral equation of choice and life
in some of these solutions: even if there are no real choices to be
made in life, at least life offers the possibility of such choices (even
if unactualizable), and that is better than death, conceived as the
absolute impossibility of choice. This still presumes, however, that
the decision is linked to a metadecision (e.g., choosing life is better
than choosing death because choosing life is also choosing to continue
to have the possibility of choosing)a decision that is precisely put
in question by the paradox. After all, part of the difficulty posed by
the scenario is precisely this: if reason needs a minimum to decide
on, this very minimum eradicates the need for decision (i.e., there
is only one right option). To choose is not really to choose; but not
choosing is choosing not to be, which is a less choice form of not-
choosing than not-really-choosing.
Commentators then worry about whether there is even a deci-
sion to be made about whether there is a decision to be madenot
just between particular objects, between possible consequences of
choosing an object, between possible criteria to apply in choosing
an object, between whether there is even any point in bothering
to choose between these objects, how fast such a choice needs to
be made, and whether one is even really choosing even if one does
decide that there is a choice to be made. Yet one cannot simply buy
out of decision making. Does someone or something else, then,
decide for you? The questions go on and on. What has been affected
in this barrage of questions implicates the objects, consequences,
criteria, ends, places, timing, reality, affects, and subjects of decision.
SPINOZAS ASS 75
It places the enigma qua pure barrier without content at the heart
of the problem of reasons default in the face of decision.
Yet what remains of the problem in almost all of the proposed
solutions is its status as a problem: what subsists unexplained, perhaps
inexplicable, in the commentaries is how the ass might effect the
transition from recognizing the problem to recognizing that there
is no problem. This is where the hesitation of the ass is crucial: how
long does it take to make a decision? Does it happen all at once?
Over a period of time? What sort of agencies are involved in such
a decision? The problem of the temporality of decision making has
to be reintroduced here, perhaps on the basis of singular situations,
not global descriptions. The scenario also points to a peculiar spatial
dislocation: absolute equidistance entails paralysis.
Keeping these remarks in mind, let me give the major genres of
proposed solutions (note that they are not necessarily all mutually
exclusive):
1. The real decision is not between b1 or b2, but for (b1 or b2), or,
in the terms of the scenario itself, between death or life:
pick a bale, any bale!18 Of course, this still leaves us with
some sticky questions: is this really a decision or rather is
the decision to be made that there is no decision to be made?
Moreover, this solution does not take Buridans ass as an im-
petus to philosophy but rather just as a kind of puzzle of not
much import, one that can be solved and resolved and whose
major benefit is its illumination of logicoeconomic details.
2. The aporia the ass presents can only be resolved by recourse
to auxiliaries. As Rescher puts this type of solution, histori-
cally, one of the most popular, random selection is the rationally
appropriate procedure for making choices in the face of symmetric
preference.19 Or, what perhaps comes to the same thing, the
recourse to auxiliaries (e.g., custom, a coin toss, expert advice)
does not of itself vitiate the concept of decision.20
3. There is a genuine liberty of indifference, that is, that deci-
sion is entirely independent of knowledge about the object
or the ontological status of the object.
4. The sophism alerts us that there can be no such thing as real
indifference between objects or any real lack of motivation
but rather that motives incline but do not necessitate (as

Leibniz maintains with his doctrine of the identity of indis-
cernibles and little perceptions).
5. The scenario is itself misconceiveda concomitant of il-
licit hypostatization, of language going on holidaysuch
that, in the very irresolvability (or triviality) of the problems
it expresses, it ought to make us rethink the philosophical
method in toto. One could even parody Wittgenstein here:
we find decision puzzling, because we dont find the whole
business of deciding puzzling enough.
6. The freedom or action of a subject is not linked to a concept
of decision qua act of will (which is founded on an insuffi-
cient representation of reality) but rather to the affirmation
of necessity through the understanding (the Stoics, Bergson,
and, as we shall see, Spinoza).21
To rephrase this list in a way that brings out some of the fundamen-
tal dissensions in the variations, (1) no intrinsic mark in the objects
is necessary for a decision, which can nonetheless still locate some
reason, say, in the consequences (i.e. a particular reason can always
be found); (2) a decision can be automated or contingent (i.e., no
particular reason needs to be found); (3) the power of decision mak-
ing is radically free (i.e., there is never a real reason); (4) if the reasons
for a decision cannot be fully explicated, as the outcome of infinitely
complex weighing processes, they are never without reason (i.e.,
there is always a real reason); (5) the concepts of decision, will, and
so on, are themselves irremediably flawed because they have no ties
with whatever the real might be (i.e., a demonstration of the falsity
of problems of decision); and (6) indecision or indecisiveness is not
real when freedom is intellectual affirmation (i.e., there is only a
real reason).
Though such a summary can only be dissatisfactory and perhaps
misleading, its benefit here is simply to underline the sophisms
extraordinary power to polarize the philosophical field and thus to
stage, in an extreme and stark fashion, the complexity of the problems
of decision. Yet, in this polarization, the very complexities start to
reintricate the divergent positions with each other again. Its surely
notable that these divergent-yet-implicated responses emerge from
SPINOZAS ASS 77
the most minimal possible scenario, in which the objects on which

the decision is to be exercised are utterly inert; the injunction to
choose derives from a compulsion for the subject itself (necessity);
the urgency of the decision is pressing (theres not all the time in the
world); and the outcome of the decision is certain (death or survival).
The tradition, in fact, does not resile from just how preposterous
the thought-experiment is, although it cannot, as we have seen, ever
leave it entirely alone.
Behind Buridans Ass Lurks Hobbess Beast

Spinoza himself, unlike so many of the aforementioned commen-
tators, and despite the mention of Buridans ass apparently merely
in passing, takes the force of the sophism with a seriousness rarely
equaled in the tradition. There are a number of reasons for this
seriousness. Above all, Spinozas novel conception of ontology is
calibrated to undermine all possible applications of the sophismto
suggest how its very presuppositions about the nature of choice, its
staging of the problematic, are due to fundamental misunderstand-
ings. At the same time, Spinoza remains careful to link his response
to the tradition, undoubtedly as part of the pedagogical aspects of
his program.
Indeed, the geometrical means of presentation of the Ethics are
not due to a stylistic or literary decision, and Spinozas position can
only be falsified if it is treated as such. Harry Wolfsons claim, then,
that there are two Spinozasthe first, the explicit axiomatizer, the
other, a secret medievalistis not only false in itself but, in induc-
ing Wolfson to minimize the radical novelty of Spinozas method,
forces him to miss both the true targets of Spinozas critique and
the true source of the latters authorization: the staged progression
of axiomatic deductive reasoning that, for Spinoza as for Hobbes,
can, in its clarity, distinctness, order, and rigor, be doubted by no
rational creature.22 Just as the doctrine of an ontological difference
between will and understanding misconceives the status of the sub-
ject, the presumption of a gap between presentation and argument
misconceives method and falsifies the demonstration.23 Hence the
crucial Proposition 7 of Part II: The order and connection of ideas
is the same as the order and connection of things. The Ethics not
only provides a model for the order and connection of ideas but is
78 JUSTI N CLEM E NS
the model for philosophys suture of ideas and things, knowing and
being, indeed, a model without any possible copy. Yet there is indeed
a real sense to Wolfsons remarks, as we shall see.
Spinoza also wishes to combat the commonplace belief that we
are free only regarding things we moderately desire, that is, those
things that seem to give us some space for vacillation, not compelling
us by force or passion or indubitability. This is also why Buridans
ass is a site where the risk of contingency could seem most pressing
for Spinoza, or to put this another way, it is where necessity (the ass
must choose or die) seems to require a doctrine of volition bordering
on some kind of liberty of indifference.
Spinozas response is found in the long scholium to the proof of
the corollary of Ethics II, P49:
I am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium

described (namely, as perceiving nothing but hunger and thirst, a
certain food and a certain drink, each equally distant from him)
would die of hunger and thirst. If I am asked, whether such a one
should not rather be considered an ass than a man; I answer, that
I do not know, neither do I know how a man should be consid-
ered, who hangs himself, or how we should consider children, fools,
madmen, etc.24
John Caird, in a classic work, offers the following gloss: Spinozas

reply virtually is, that the supposed conflict of motives is, when
we examine what we mean, only a conflict of ideas, and that ideas
never really conflict save when one idea is adequate and another
confused and imperfect; that in the latter case reason is the true
umpire, and that suspense or inaction would prove, not that reason
fails to decide, but that the non-deciding agent is a fool or a mad-
man.25 This, a standard reading, is astute and accurate as far as it
goes. Spinoza unhesitatingly affirms that such a situation is entirely
possible but that it has no rationally founded correlate. Once again,
note how seriously Spinoza takes the problem and how radical is
his response: will and understanding cannot be separated, given that
they are always and only true when they are particular affirmations
of particular ideas, themselves the expressions of necessity.26 As he
states in On the Improvement of the Understanding, an idea is
SPINOZAS ASS 79
in itself nothing else than a certain sensation; but doubt will arise
through another idea, not clear and distinct enough for us to be
able to draw any certain conclusion with regard to the matter under
consideration; that is, the idea which causes us to doubt is not clear
and distinct.27 It is thus the confusion of perceptionsnot the af-
firmation of ideasthat might lead to such a deleterious situation
as exemplified by Buridans ass.
So it is further necessary to emphasize that Spinozas epistemo-
logical doctrine cannot be separated from his ontology, an ontology
that also founds and implies a politics: the infinite attributes and
modes of God are not submitted to a transcendent One but to an
immanent oneness that is the cause of all things, and that, being all
on a sole and single plane, things are so in their multiplicity. This
also entails, as Alain Badiou has argued, Spinozas foreclosure of the
void, the banishment of contingency, the indistinction of inclusion
and belonging, and the opening of a symptomatic gulf between
the finite and the infinite.28 But it also means that we are confronted
with an ethics of ideas that is fundamentally also a politics of equal-
ity because it is an ontology of immanence.29
It is at this point that I want to return to the ass and, moreover,
to the linkages that Spinoza immediately makes with suicides, chil-
dren, fools, and madmen. Many commentators identify a Talmudic
origin for this list, thereby placing it in the sphere of religious beliefs
that Spinoza has himself personally left behind and that he criticizes
as he historicizes. At the same time, one must also recognize that
any such allusion cannot simply be to misguided theological beliefs
but must have a direct political import as well. Spinoza was not the
notoriously atheistic author of a Theologico-Political Treatise for noth-
ing, a book famously denominated by Pierre Bayle as a pernicious
and a hateful book.30
In fact, the allusion is not simplyif at allto Jewish sacred
texts and rabbinical interpretation but to another, very specific text,
much more contemporary, powerful, pressing, and virulent in the
context of the later seventeenth century at large and for Spinoza
in particular. For, in chapter XXVI of his Leviathan, titled Of Civil
Laws, Thomas Hobbes has recourse to precisely the same sequence
of dupes: Over natural fools, children, or madmen there is no law,
no more than over brute beasts; nor are they capable of the title of
just or unjust, because they had never power to make any covenant
or to understand the consequences thereof, and consequently never
took upon them to authorize the actions of any sovereign, as they
must do that make to themselves a commonwealth.31 If the animus
against the Cartesian hyperbole of the will is clear hereBuridans ass
is certainly Descartess donkeywe must also stress the ethical and
political animus of Spinozas ass against Hobbes. For Spinoza, there
is no real division between natural and civil right, no representation,
no One to rule the Multitude as transcendent exception. It is not a
social covenant as artificial rupture with the state of nature that orders
politics but rather nature itself that ultimately orders the political
realm, and it is therefore Spinozas radical naturalism that induces
him to invoke Buridans ass here against the Hobbesian assault. If, for
Spinoza, Descartes has attempted to protect revealed theology from
the intrusion of philosophy32 through a transcendental division of
dominion, Hobbes, too, has given way on his own naturalism to the
benefit of a revivified division between sovereign and subject.
It is not simply that fools, children, and madmen are incapable
of making a covenant that places them outside the necessarily ar-
tificial laws of a commonwealthsuch a law for Hobbes requiring
their active submission to a sovereign33but that their freedom is
curtailed precisely by their inability to be active, to affirm, in Spinozas
specific, intellectual sense: he, who, as in the case of an infant or a
child, has a body capable of very few activities, and depending, for
the most part, on external causes, has a mind which, considered in
itself alone, is scarcely conscious of itself, or of God, or of things
(Ethics V, P39S). It is therefore not the case that fools, children, and
madmen remain irremediably prepolitical or, more precisely, unable
to enter into a true political commonwealth. On the contrary, they
are barely political because they are insufficiently natural: they are
separated from their own power, restricted in their affirmation of
adequate ideas, not simply incapable of compacting with a sover-
eign.34 Crucially, too, these figures are not all restricted in the same
way, for all men are born completely ignorant of everything, and
they, too, affirm insofar as their right enables them.35
For such a separation does not compromise their natural right,
and this fact has immediate political consequences. We might turn
here to chapter 16 of the Theological-Political Treatise, titled On the
SPINOZAS ASS 81
Foundations of the State, on the Natural and Civil Right of Each

Person, and on the Authority of Sovereign Powers, to verify this.
The chapter explores consequences of two of Spinozas principles:
first, the problem of how far free thinking can be extended in the
best kind of state, and second, the problem of sovereign power in
general, especially regarding the sovereignty of individuals. For Spi-
noza, of course, each individual thing has the sovereign right to do
everything that it can do, or the right of each thing extends so far as
its determined power extends.36 Moreover, we recognize no differ-
ence between human beings and other individual things of nature,
nor between those human beings who are endowed with reason and
others who do not know true reason, nor between fools or lunatics
and the sane.37 Beasts, too, cannot be very far away: Spinoza at once
invokes the right of big fish to eat smaller ones.
One consequence is that, in a commonwealth, then, promises are
never enough: force must always be added to ensure compliance. Yet
this force is not that which reduces men to slavery or infancy but
rather that which helps induce to reason insofar as reason will show
that obedience to a sovereign has more benefits than following ones
pleasures.38 Such obedience involves an increase, not a decrease, in
power. Yet this reason will also show the limits of all and any practical
sovereignty, for, as Spinoza adds in the following chapter:
No one will ever be able to transfer his power and (consequently)

his right to another person in such a way that he ceases to be a
human being; and there will never be a sovereign power that can
dispose of everything just as it pleases.39
Aside from anything else, this simpleyet far from anodyne

statement emphasizes that the state or the sovereign can be neither
total nor totalizing, nor can their putative willing be understood
outside the immanence of nature. If the state goes as far as its power
can extend, then, we will end up in a democratic republic, not a
Hobbesian stateand this state itself can only affirm our further
powers for transformation (everyone is allowed to think what he
or she wishes and to say what he or she thinks) as long as they do
not contravene the necessities of obedience.
For Spinoza, a slave is not a child is not a citizen. But this is also
why affect proves so crucial for the Spinozan ontology, to explain

how one can become other than one is through experience; such
experience, moreover, cannot ultimately be founded on any real
undecidability; any experience of the undecidable can only be a
function not of freedom but of ignorance; such ignorance is there-
fore directly mortificatory, as opposed to life affirming; yet such an
experience is also precisely educative.40 Hence Deleuze will say that,
as a Spinozist, you will define an animal, or a human being, not by
its form, its organs, and its functions, and not as a subject either; you
will define it by the affects of which it is capable. Affective capacity,
with a maximum threshold and a minimum threshold, is a constant
notion in Spinoza.41 Quite right: affect in Spinoza is such a profound
notion because it must have an ontological bearing, and I think this
is ultimately what separates Spinoza from the rest of the tradition
of commentary on Buridans ass.
One speculative point remains: why did Spinoza call the sophism
Buridans ass at all? Is this attribution simply an accident or mistake,
of no real consequence? I do not believe so. I have already implied
that Buridans ass is a covert, distance-taking denomination of
Hobbess beast, whether one thinks of that beast as the wolf-that-
is-man in the state of nature or of Leviathan itself as the greatest of
artificial beasts on earth: an ass-in-wolf s-clothing, wreathed in the
fear of death. Perhaps we can go further still. Jean Buridans impetus
physics was precisely directed against the well-known failures of the
Aristotelian system and was explicitly presented as such. As Alexan-
dre Koyr puts the problem with Aristotles physics in a classic essay,
movement which is contra naturam requires throughout its duration
the continuous action of an external mover conjoint to the moved.
Remove the mover, and the movement will equally stop. As Koyr
further notes, Aristotelian physics thus forms an admirable and
perfectly coherent theory which, to tell the truth, has only one flaw
(besides that of being false): that of being contradicted by everyday
practice, by the practice of throwing.42 So Buridans posthumous
reputation at least partially derived from his insistence, with the
other partisans of impetus physics, that the mover also, in moving,
transmitted some kind of further force to what was moved and, in
so doing, produced the movement as its cause. If it is no longer a
process of actualization, movement is still conceived according to a
SPINOZAS ASS 83
rudimentary form of common sense.43 It is not until Galileo, Des-

cartes, Beeckman, and others that the real nature of motion can be
properly formalizedand it can only be so under the conditions of
a mathematical physics. What the seventeenth century is therefore
capable of, it is capable of because of its mathematics and its mate-
rialism, indeed, its sewing together of the twoand this is precisely
Spinozas position in the wake of Descartes and Hobbes. In other
words, impetus physics was incapable of surmounting or resolving
the Aristotelian problems of movement because there was no way
for Buridan to be a modern natural philosopher. Yet Buridan, at the
same time, is someone who correctly recognized the problems.
Significantly, though, Buridans own peculiar compromise between
voluntarism and rationalismthat intellect is not enough to deter-
mine the will in any simple way but that some other cause must be
available that the deferral or suspension of the act of willing will be
explicablehas recently been read as, in fact, a strictly intellectual-
ist position, one that hinges on a specific doctrine of not-willing as
deferral.44 Buridans proposal can therefore only be made, in Spinozas
terms, on the basis of a superadded principle (a peculiar doctrine of
not-willing) at the very same moment that it takes a valuable step in the
right direction (no real separation of reason and will).
Spinozas very nomination of the sophism as Buridans ass can
be read it as follows: Buridans ass specifically denominates the
philosophical failures of both Descartes, with his idealizing division
of substance and hyperbole of the will, and Hobbes, who gives way
on his own materialism through an idealizing division of nature
and commonwealth and through the hyperbole of the sovereigns
will. Descartes and Hobbes fail because they split substance and
consecrate volitionif in their apparently very different waysand
thereby remain theologians. Hobbes, despite his attempts to resolve
the problems of political commonwealth, succumbs to an asinine
solution by attempting to save the appearances of political tyranny
(also supported by traditional discourses of, e.g., divine right) by su-
peradding a theory of antinatural sovereign exceptionality. The real
solution is, at least on Spinozas own account, a truly mathematical
and materialist one that affirms immanence, multiplicity, univocity,
and necessity. The radical doubt of the ass, its suspension of action,
is not due to its rationalistic philosophical motives or its genuine
empiricism but rather to its inability to affirm ideas. For Spinoza, the
problems of decision raised by the ass are false problems, based on
the imaginative confusion of those who separate will from thought.
The only solution can be given in and by the active affirmation of
true ideas, for which no love save intellectual love is eternal.
Notes
1 All references to the Ethics are from B. de Spinoza, Ethics, Including
the Improvement of the Understanding, trans. R.H.M. Elwes (New
York: Prometheus, 1989).
2 John Cottingham, The Intellect, the Will, and the Passions: Spi-
nozas Critique of Descartes, Spinoza: Critical Assessments, vol. 2,
The Ethics, ed. G. Lloyd (London: Routledge, 2001), 221.
3 In what follows, I will be referring to Buridans ass as, alternatively,
a sophism, a scenario, a drama, etc. In my opinion, very little
hangs on these variant denominations; I deploy them in context
when emphasizing one or another aspect of the ass, but they are
ultimately not determining for the logic of my argument. If I prefer
the term sophism, however, it is for a couple reasons: (1) the term
sophism has a notable extraphilosophical history (on which, see
Barbara Cassins brief note in Leffet sophistique [Paris: Gallimard,
1995], 5056) and (2) it is Jacques Lacans term for his own scenario
of the prisoners and logical time, about which he says it is a
remarkable sophism, in the classical sense of the termthat is,
a significant example for the resolution of the forms of a logical
function at the historical moment at which the problem these forms
raise presents itself to philosophical examination. Lacan, Ecrits,
trans. B. Fink with H. Fink and R. Grigg (New York: W.W. Norton,
2006), 163. Following Lacans lead, I propose that Buridans ass
becomes a significant sophism for the seventeenth-century think-
ers in particularprecisely because of the problematic of the will
that Descartes establishesalthough it has, as we will see, a much
longer philosophical history.
4 Buridan is usually considered a nominalist inheritor of William
of Ockham, against whom he later turned. The fifteenth-century
French poet (and career criminal) Franois Villon wrote a famous
SPINOZAS ASS 85
poem in which Buridan appears, Ballade des Dames du Temps

Jadis, embedded in the great longer poem Le testament (ca.
1461). The poem has been translated into English by a number of
reputable poets, perhaps most influentially by Dante Gabriel Ros-
setti, as The Ballad of Dead Ladies. The relevant stanza runs:
Wheres Hloise, the learned nun, / For whose sake Abeillard, I
ween, / Lost manhood and put priesthood on? / (From Love he won
such dule and teen!) / And where, pray you, is the Queen / Who
willd that Buridan should steer / Sewd in a sacks mouth down
the Seine? / But where are the snows of yester-year? The Queen
of this verse is Jeanne of Navarre, and the reference to Buridan be-
ing thrown in the river is presumably a triple scholastic joke at his
expense: (1) Buridan was renowned for being a ladies man, who, in
the course of his adventures, had an encounter with Queen Jeanne,
who, as was allegedly her wont, would subsequently have her lovers
thrown into the Seine; Buridan allegedly saved himself from being
drowned by having a barge filled with hay sail past just as he was
being defenestrated by the Queens henchmen. (2) As F.C.T. Moore
points out, in one of the paradoxes treated in his Sophismata, under
Insolubilia in chapter VIII, Buridan gives this title for Sophism XVII:
You Will Throw Me in the Water. The sophism itself concerns
Socrates and Plato. Plato, guarding a bridge, tells Socrates that the
latter can cross if the first proposition he utters is true; if not, Plato
will throw Socrates in the water. Socrates immediately responds,
You will throw me in the water. If what Socrates says is indeed
true, then Plato cannot throw Socrates in the water, which renders
the statement immediately untrue; if it is false, then Plato will not
throw Socrates in the water, which of course makes it true. One
might immediately object that the statement is therefore neither
true nor false, i.e., not simply true, which means Socrates should
indeed end up in the water. (3) There is a third joke, on the problems
raised and allegedly resolved by Buridans impetus physics itself (of
which more later).
5 Peter King, John Buridan: Life and Times, in John Buridans
Logic: The Treatise on Supposition; The Treatise on Consequences, trans.
and with an introduction by P. King (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D.
Reidel, 1985), 3. See also S.M. Kayes speculations in Buridans
Ass: Is There Wisdom in the Story? Dialogue and Universalism, no.
86 JU STI N CLEM E NS
34 (2005): 13746, that Buridans fable is best understood in the

context of Ockhams philosophy. Note, too, that if one wants to
play this Scholastic game, Duns Scotus would be another impor-
tant interlocutor. For Scotus, the freedom of the will is such that,
in willing X, the will could always also have been able to will not-X
at the same time, suggesting a kind of pre-Leibnizian garden of
forking paths (to invoke J.L. Borgess fable).
6 See Nicholas Rescher, Scholastic Meditations (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 2005).
7 Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1954), 94, 1064, cited in Mark Skousen and Kenna
C. Taylor, Puzzles and Paradoxes in Economics (Cheltenham, U.K.:
Edward Elgar, 1997), 117.
8 Pons asinorum (Bridge of asses) was traditionally the epithet
given to Proposition 5, Book 1 of Euclids Elements of geometry:
In isosceles triangles the angles of the base equal each other, and,
if the equal straight lines are produced further, then the angles
under the base equal one another.
9 And it is thought that every animal has its own special pleasure,
just as it has its own special function: namely, the pleasure of
exercising that function. This will also appear if we consider the
different animals one by one: the horse, the dog, man, have differ-
ent pleasuresas Heracleitus says, an ass would prefer chaff to
gold, since to asses food gives more pleasure than gold. Aristotle,
Nichomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1934), X, v. 8.
10 Indeed, Buridans ass reemerges directly in Heines writings but
figures as a problem of sexual desire: should he sleep with the
mother or the daughter? In welche soll ich mich verlieben, / Da beide
liebenswrdig sind? / Ein schnes Weib ist noch die Mutter, / Die Tochter
ist ein schnes Kind. Verschiedene, in H. Heine, Historisch-kritische
Gesamtausgabe der Werke: Neue Gedichte, Band II, ed. E. Genton
(Hamburg, Germany: Hoffman and Campe, 1983), 49. As Claudio
Magris notes in his superb travel book on the Danube, ever since
Apuleius, the ass has been honoured for its sexual potency. This
potency, on which even Buffon dwelt, is not the arrogance of the
bull, all very fine for purposes of machismo, nor the disagreeable
satyriasis of the cockerel, but is part and parcel of its humble
SPINOZAS ASS 87
patience, the unruffled strength of the way it faces life. Magris,

Danube, trans. P. Creagh (London: Harvill, 2001), 109. I would like
to thank Gert Reifarth for drawing Heines poem to my attention.
11 Walter Benjamin, The Origins of German Tragic Drama, trans. J.
Osborne, with an introduction by G. Steiner (London: Verso,
1977), 7071. As Benjamin adds, indecision is the complement
of bloody terror (71). Because the problematic of a sovereign
decision will be at stake later in this chapter, it is of interest to note
that Carl Schmitt found Benjamins theses worthy of a serious
response and that, in doing so, he had recourse to Hobbes: The
exoteric dossier of this debate, which took place in various forms
and at differing levels of intensity between 1925 and 1956, is not
very large: Benjamins citation of Political Theology in The Origin of
German Tragic Drama; the curriculum vitae of 1928 and Benjamins
letter to Schmitt from December 1930 (both of which attest to an
interest in and admiration for the fascist public law theorist and
have always appeared scandalous); and Schmitts citations of and
references to Benjamin in his book Hamlet or Hecuba, written when
the Jewish philosopher had been dead for sixteen years. This dos-
sier was further enlarged with the publication in 1988 of the letters
Schmitt wrote to Hansjrg Viesel in 1973, in which Schmitt states
that his 1938 book on Hobbes had been conceived as a response
to Benjamin [that has] remained unnoticed. Giorgio Agamben,
State of Exception, trans. K. Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2005), 52. And since Schmitts name has been raised, it is
also pertinent to note the now-extensive discussion about forced
choices that national socialism inflicted on its victims and that
Primo Levi ultimately denominated as occupying a gray zone.
William Styrons Sophies Choice (New York: Random House, 1979)
proffers one novelistic variant of such a decision.
12 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. M. Lester with C. Stivale
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 74.
13 As Rescher, Scholastic Meditations, 43, notes: 1. Its Greek context
in cosmological discussion of the Earths place in the physical uni-
verse (Anaximander, Plato, Aristotle). 2. Its Scholastic context in
ethico-theological discussion of mans freedom of will (Aquinas,
probably Buridan, and others). 3. Its medieval Arabic context in
epistemo-theological discussion of the amenability of Gods choices
to reason and to human rationalization, that is, the possibility of

explaining Gods actions in ways acceptable to reasoning men
(Ghazali, Averroes).
14 Skousen and Taylor, Puzzles and Paradoxes in Economics, 119. One
problem with this proposed solution is that it misses the possibility
that giving chance such a role precisely undermines what choice is
allegedly about (e.g., selecting between possibilities on a basis that
is not simply randomized), and it presumes that life is unquestion-
ably better than death in the application of the metacalculus.
15 Amartya Sen, The Discipline of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Journal
of Legal Studies 29, no. 2 (2000): 94041. Sen cites Bourbaki and set
theory for support for this distinction.
16 Indeed, Derrida deploys it as an epigraph for Cogito and the His-
tory of Madness, in Writing and Difference, trans. and with notes
by A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 31. In this
context, Gilles Deleuzes comments on the problem of choice are
of extreme interest: A fascinating idea was developed from Pascal
to Kierkegaard: the alternative is not between terms but between
the modes of existence of the one who chooses. There are choices
that can only be made on condition that one persuades oneself
that one has no choice, sometimes by virtue of a moral necessity
(good, right), sometimes by virtue of a physical necessity (the state
of things, the situation), sometimes by virtue of a psychological
necessity (the desire that one has for something). The spiritual
choice is made between the mode of existence of him who chooses
on the condition of not knowing it, and the mode of existence of
him who knows that it is a matter of choosing. It is as if there was
a choice of choice or non-choice. If I am conscious of choice, there
are therefore already choices that I can no longer make, and modes
of existence that I can no longer followall those I followed on the
condition of persuading myself that there was no choice. Deleuze,
Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habber-
jam (London: Continuum, 2005), 117. It is, moreover, no surprise,
then, that a cinematic ass quickly raises its head: Bresson adds yet
a fifth type, a fifth characterthe beast or the ass in Balthazar pos-
sessing the innocence of him who does not have to choose (119).
17 This gives us the peculiar situation in which, as Rescher, Scholastic
Meditations, 47, puts it, it is surely a contingent fact that random
SPINOZAS ASS 89
processes and devices exist in the world: it is logically feasible to

conceive of a possible universe without them. Now the problem
of choice without preference is, in its abstract essentials, a theo-
retical and not a practical problem. It seems curious that the solu-
tion of this theoretical problem hinges upon the availability of an
instrumentality (viz., random choice) whose existence is contin-
gent. Surprisingly, it is thus possible to conceive of circumstances
(specifically, symmetric choice situations) in which the possibility
of rational action depends upon an otherwise wholly extraneous
matter of contingent fact: the availability to rational agents of
random selection methods. But isnt it precisely the case that the
scenario implies that logic cannot totalize its own fieldthat logical
operators are also necessarily implicated with modal categories?
18 Moore, in fact, thinks the real thrust of Averroess case is the follow-
ing: that the difficult case could occur, but that it was one in which
the person should be represented as having a desire or preference for
a disjunctiona wants (p or q). But the desire for a disjunction can
be fulfilled without there being any desire for one disjunct over the
other. F.C.T. Moore, Rome Inferences and Structural Opacity,
Mind 99, no. 396 (1990): 606. Moore continues, In these cases it is
the logical operators which become opaque in the neighbourhood of
propositional attitudes, in the sense of failing to license the usual
inferences (607).
19 Rescher, Scholastic Meditations, 42.
20 In practice, of course, an ass would have inherited enough horse-
sense to eat one bale and then the other. One of the reasons that
Buridans Ass is a silly ass, then, is precisely that he interpreted
choice too strictly. Non-rational or arbitrary choice is not self-
contradictory nor is it irrational. In some instances non-rational
choice has a rational application, e.g. resolving the asss dilemma,
starting a game, drawing a ticket, arbitrating a dispute and deciding
a tied vote. In others, it would be used irrationally, e.g. selecting a
bride, electing a pope, judging a man on trial for his life and grading
examinations. But whether it is applied rationally or irrationally it is
still a genuine type of choice. James I. McAdam, Choosing Flip-
pantly or Non-rational Choice, Analysis 25, suppl. 3 ( January 1965):
136. Or, in the absence of reasons, must Buridans Ass starve?...
In the absence of grounds for preference, it is reasonable to use a
randomising instrument of selection such as a coin toss. Robert

G. Burton, Choice, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42,
no. 4 (1982): 585.
21 As F.C.T. Moore writes in Bergson: Thinking Backwards (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 112, to the extent
that the branching diagrams purport to represent a sequence of
events which leaves room for freedom, they create fertile ground
for paradoxes such as Buridans Ass, by putting into the diagram
or its interpretation the notion of the two branches being equally
open, while leaving out the fact that one of them is the one which
has been, or will be taken. Furthermore, branching diagrams are
a way of representing a given sequence of events, together with a
representation of alternative sequences which could have occurred
if things were not as they were. They cannot capture real hesitation
(113).
22 See H.A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent
Processes of His Reasoning (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1948), e.g., 24: In its concentrated form of exposition and
in the baffling allusiveness and ellipticalness of its style, the Ethics
may be compared to the Talmudic and rabbinic writings upon
which Spinoza was brought up, and it is in that spirit in which the
old rabbinic scholars approach the study of their standard texts that
we must approach the study of the Ethics. Deleuze offers another
account: The Ethics is a book written twice simultaneously: once
in the continuous stream of definitions, propositions, demonstra-
tions, and corollaries, which develop the great speculative themes
with all the rigors of the mind; another time in the broken chain of
scholia, a discontinuous volcanic line, a second version underneath
the first, expressing all the angers of the heart and setting forth the
practical theses of denunciation and liberation. Gilles Deleuze,
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. R. Hurley (San Francisco: City
Lights Books, 1988), 2829. See also the essay Spinoza and the
Three Ethics, in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. D.W. Smith and
M.A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997),
e.g., 138: This book, one of the greatest in the world, is not what
it seems at first glance: it is not homogenous, rectilinear, continu-
ous, serene, navigable, a pure language without style.
23 Hence Pierre Macherey casts aspersions on those who conceive of
SPINOZAS ASS 91
the Ethics as a collection of separate treatisesbriefly stated, an

ontology or a theology, an epistemology together with a physics,
and a physiology, politics and, finally, an ethicsthat have been
collected and arranged in a certain order for publication. Spinoza,
however, expressly states that these are successive parts of a whole.
Spinoza, From Action to Production of Effects: Observations on
the Ethical Significance of Ethics I, in God and Nature: Spinozas
Metaphysics, vol. 1, ed. Y. Yovel (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill,
1991), 162.
24 It would presumably be surprising to Spinoza that at least two
of the twentieth centurys greatest thinkers seem to have starved
themselves to death, if according to very different logics: Kurt Gdel
and Simone Weil. As Jacqueline Lagre remarks, one significant
example has to do with suicide. We know the extent to which all of
Ethics IV, which Spinoza aptly calls On Human Bondage, is aimed
at demonstrating that philosophy is a meditation on life and not on
death. Thus, in his opinion, those who kill themselves are weak-
minded and completely conquered by external causes contrary to
their nature (Ethics IV, P18, S3). To him, then, suicide represents
the very highest degree of alienation or human bondage. Spinoza,
From External Compulsion to Liberating Cooperation: A Reply
to Macherey, in Yovel, God and Nature, 184.
25 John Caird, Spinoza (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1888), 24243.
Or, as Cottingham, The Intellect, the Will, and the Passions, 231,
puts it, Spinoza insists that the Buridanian man would indeed per-
ish of hunger and thirst. The reasoning appears to be this: if the
premise is that there is absolutely nothing impinging on the mans
perceptions but the feelings of hunger or thirst and the equally
distant food and drink, then on this assumption there will indeed
be no decision.... A being whose perceptions were limited strictly
to these immediate stimuli and nothing else would not be anything
recognizable as a human being in the sense of a normal rational
agent.
26 Spinoza, The Improvement of the Understanding, in Ethics,
27. Hence Spinozas response to the other possible objections he
raises, in order, (1) will is a universal that essays to explain all par-
ticular volitions but, as such, fails to recognize that such particulars
must each and all be affirmations; (2) we can indeed suspend our
judgment, but suspension of judgment is ... strictly speaking, a

perception, and not free will; (3) the will is something universal
which is predicated of all ideas, and that it only signifies that which
is common to all ideas, namely, an affirmation, whose adequate
essence must, therefore, in so for [sic] as it is thus conceived in the
abstract, be in every idea, and be, in this respect alone, the same
in all, not in so far as it is considered as constituting the ideas es-
sence: for, in this respect, particular affirmations differ one from the
other, as much as do ideas. Hence the singularity and the equality
of ideas; hence the impossibility of suspension in the realm of free
will; and hence the bond between freedom and necessity forged by
affirmation.
27 Moreover, doubt is only a suspension of the spirit concerning some
affirmation or negation which it would pronounce upon unhesitat-
ingly if it were not in ignorance of something, without which the
knowledge of the matter in hand must needs be imperfect. We
may, therefore, conclude that doubt always proceeds from want
of due order in investigation. Spinoza, On the Improvement of
the Understanding, 28.
28 See Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (London:
Continuum, 2005), 11220. See also Spinozas Closed Ontology,
in Briefings on Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology, trans.
and ed. N. Madarasz (Albany: State University of New York, 2006),
7387. Significantly, in this latter essay, Badiou remarks that the real
problem is: How? How does the finite intellect have true ideas, given
that it does not have adequate knowledge of the body-object whose
idea it is? (83). On Badious reading of Spinoza, see S. Gillespie, The
Mathematics of Novelty: Badious Minimalist Metaphysics (Melbourne:
re.press, 2008), 2542.
29 On this point, in addition to Gilles Deleuzes indispensable work,
Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. M. Joughin (New York:
Zone Books, 1990), see the excellent study of Etienne Balibar,
Spinoza and Politics, trans. P. Snowdon (London: Verso, 1998).
30 Why would Bayle express such distaste for the book in such terms?
As Jonathan Israel puts it in his introduction to a new English trans-
lation of the text, progress in understanding the history of human
thought and belief, and Mans ancient texts, depends on combining
a particular set of naturalistic philosophical criteria with new rules
SPINOZAS ASS 93
of text criticism which supplement the philology of the past with

the strict elimination of all supernatural agency and miracles and
a constant stress on reconstructing historical context. The general
principles guiding Spinozas text criticism are identical to those he
applies to the study of nature. B. de Spinoza, Theological-Political
Treatise, ed. J. Israel, trans. M. Silverthorne and J. Israel (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), xvi. In other words, the atheist
Jew has been so blasphemous as to organize an account of the
two booksthe Book of the World, and the Book of Scripture
as if they were both subject to the very same rationalist principles,
thereby, as commentators have noted, rendering both religion and
theology the effect of inadequate ideas.
31 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, Ont.,
Canada: Broadview, 2002), 202. Although it is uncertain whether
Spinoza had access to Leviathan when writing the Theological-Political
Treatise (which he had begun in 1665), as Noel Malcolm reminds us,
the main outlines of the political theory in that book are drawn
not from debates within Judaism but from the Dutch Hobbesian-
republican tradition. Even the lengthy discussions of the Old Tes-
tament in that book may also owe something directly to Hobbes:
although Spinoza did not read English, he was a friend of the man
who was translating Leviathan into Dutch in the period 16657, and
he may also have had time to benefit from the Latin translation of
Leviathan (1668) before finishing the Tractatus theologico-politicus in
1670. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004), 47.
32 Theo Verbeek, Spinozas Theologico-Political Treatise: Exploring the
Will of God (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2003), 151. As Verbeek
continues, it is likely that Spinoza aims at lifting the epistemologi-
cal obstacles Cartesians had erected to prevent philosophy from
interfering with theology and faith (151).
33 Hobbes, Leviathon, 197, defines civil law in this manner: Civil Law
is to every subject those rules which the commonwealth hath commanded
him (by word, writing, or other sufficient sign of the will) to make use of,
for the distinction of right and wrong, that is to say, of what is contrary
and what is not contrary to the rule.
34 As Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, 2634, says in his negotia-
tions of this dicey point, the state of reason, in its initial aspect,
already has a complex relation to the state of nature. On the one

hand the state of nature is not subject to the laws of reason: reason
relates to the proper and true utility of man, and tends solely to
his preservation; Nature on the other hand has no regard for the
preservation of man and comprises an infinity of other laws con-
cerning the universe as a whole, of which man is but a small part.
But the state of reason is not, on the other hand, of another order
than the state of nature itself. Reason, even in its commandments,
demands nothing contrary to Nature: it demands only that every-
one should love themselves, seek what is useful to themselves, and
strive to preserve their being by increasing their power of action.
There is thus no artificiality or conventionality in reasons endeavor.
Reason proceeds not by artifice, but by a natural combination of
relations; it does not so much bring in calculation, as a kind of
direct recognition of man by man. For a good short account of
the relation between Spinoza and Hobbes on this point, see A.
Armstrong, Some Reflections on Deleuzes Spinoza, in Deleuze
and Philosophy: The Difference Engineer, ed. K.A. Pearson (London:
Routledge, 1997), esp. 4648.
35 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 196.
36 Ibid., 195.
37 Ibid., 196.
38 As Spinoza puts it in the Ethics IV, P37S2, an emotion can only be
restrained by an emotion stronger than, and contrary to itself, and
that men avoid inflicting injury through fear of incurring a greater
injury themselves. On this law society can be established, so long
as it keeps in its own hand the right, possessed by everyone, of
avenging injury, and pronouncing on good and evil; and provided
it also possesses the power to lay down a general rule of conduct,
and to pass laws sanctioned, not by reason, which is powerless in
restraining emotion, but by threats.
39 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 208.
40 In her book $urplus: Spinoza, Lacan (Buffalo: State University of New
York Press, 2007), 8, A.K. Kordela identifies a torsion in Deleuzes
and Spinozas argument against final causes precisely in regard to
the exemplary event that introduces life and death into human
existence: As Deleuze, who obviously accepts Spinozas distinc-
tion between scientific and moral truths, puts it in his paraphrase
SPINOZAS ASS 95
of Spinozas argument: [B]ecause Adam is ignorant of causes, he

thinks that God morally forbids him something, whereas God only
reveals the natural consequences of eating the fruit. This distinction,
however, remains untenable as far as Adams subsequent action is
concerned. For, Gods explanation why Adam should not eat of
the tree of knowledge is simply that in the day that you eat of it
you shall die. Nothing in this statement indicates whether Adam
should prefer to live rather than die, and this preference in itself
presupposes an end (to live) as better than another end (to die).
While this is, to some extent, true, is it not the SpinozanDeleuzian
point that Adam will learn only through affect and not through fic-
tion?
42 Alexandre Koyr, Galileo and Plato, Journal of the History of Ideas
4, no. 4 (1943): 411.
43 This matters here insofar as medieval scholars tended to forge a
particular relation between physics and psychology. As Jack Zupko
notes, like most medieval commentators on Aristotle, Buridan
conceives of psychology as that branch of physics whose proper
subject is mobile, animate being. Zupko, John Buridan on the
Immateriality of the Intellect, Proceedings of the Society for Medieval
Logic and Metaphysics 1 (2001): 5.
44 On this, see Fabienne Pironet, The Notion of non velle in Buridans
Ethics, in The Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy of John Buridan,
ed. J.M.M.H. Thijssen and J. Zupko (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill,
2001), 199219. Following Zupko, Pironet demonstrates that no
one should hesitate to say that Buridan is an intellectualist, and
even a strict intellectualist (199). The demonstration hinges on a
difference between the Scotistic and Buridanian doctrines of not-
willing.
part ii
Politics, Theology, and
Interpretation
5
Toward an Inclusive
Universalism: Spinozas
Ethics of Sustainability
michael mack
Spinoza and the Critique of Hierarchy

Does the ethology Spinoza advanced in his Ethics have singular sig-
nificance for the formulation of a viable contemporary social theory?
Spinozas presence in the thought of divergent twentieth-century
thinkers from Louis Althusser via Etienne Balibar and Gilles Deleuze
to Antonio Negris recent critique of twenty-first-century forms of
imperialism (as well as Martha Nussbaums work on the intelligence
of the emotions) indicates his peculiar contemporaneousness.1
This is not to claim that Spinoza anticipated the social problems
that haunt our seemingly inclusive global society. Instead of dislo-
cating Spinozas thought from his particular historical setting, this
article analyzes how his Ethics delineates the project of a kind of
modernity that offers an alternative to the current Kantian approach
toward defining the modern. Within the latter part of the eighteenth
centuryunder the immense influence of Kants transcendental
philosophyhistory came to represent modernity: the future of
humanity seemed to promise its immanent perfectibility. I have
shown elsewhere how these attempts at constructing a perfect
otherworldly world within this one were premised on the exclusion
of worldly imperfections.2 Judaism and the Jews represented these
bodily remainders of contingency and political as well as ethical
deficiency. It was thought that with the progress of history, worldly
99
100 M I CHAEL M ACK
imperfections would vanish from the world just as Jews and Judaism
would cease to exist in the perfect modern state of the future.
For writers who critically confronted this demotion of naturalistic
contingency and embodied life, Spinozas antiteleological thought
became an inspiration for their literary revision of Kants idealism.
This chapter therefore discusses Spinozas writings on politics and
ethics as an alternative to a Kantian conception of modernity. It analy-
ses the ways in which Spinozas Ethics delineates the blueprint for a
nonhierarchical and nonexclusive understanding of human sociability.
Accordingly, it takes issue with a recent trend in scholarly literature
that attributes a hierarchical framework to Spinozas understanding
of ethics.3 Recently, Steven B. Smith has thus argued that the Ethics
radicalizes Descartess divide between the biological, namely, the
natural realm of the body, and the intellectual sphere of the mind.4
There is some scholarly disagreement as to how radical the
divide was that Descartes established between mind and body.
Susan James has taken some critics to task who overemphasize
this divisiveness: By treating The Meditations on First Philosophy as
Descartess philosophical treatment, scholars have created a one-
sided interpretation of Cartesianism in which the division between
body and soul is overemphasized and sometimes misunderstood.5
John Cottingham has abstained from overemphasizing Descartess
divide between body and mind,6 but he nonetheless acknowledges
Spinozas striking departure from a Cartesian mindbody dualism:
When Spinoza himself speaks of the mind and body as being
united, or of their union, he emphatically rejects the Cartesian
idea of union as an intermingling or joining together; what is meant,
rather, is that mind and body are unum et idem, one and the same.7
Recently, Steven Nadler has confirmed this crucial difference between
Descartess and Spinozas philosophy in relation to their respective
writings about mind and body: For Spinoza, there is a fundamental
identity between mind and bodyand thus a fundamental unity to
the human beingthat goes much deeper than any difference there
may be between them.8 According to Smith, however, Spinoza
seems to emphasize the difference rather than the unity between
the corporal and the cerebral.
Instead of critically questioning this binary opposition between
nature and intellect, Spinoza here appears to reaffirm the supremacy
TOWARD AN INCLUSIVE UNIVERSALISM 101
of the latter over the former. This hierarchy of values results from
imputing a certain teleological agenda to the underlying conception
and structure of the Ethics. On this view, Spinozas denial of teleol-
ogy on the part of both nature and God only paves the way for his
enthronement of humanity as the agent of moral progress in the
universe. In this way, Nadler has recently argued that Spinozas co-
natus (i.e., Spinozas understanding of self-preservation) is through
and through teleological: Thus, all individuals have a basic kind of
teleological behavior, in so far as they strive to do what best preserves
their being.9 Clearly Spinozas critique of a certain kind of theology
is directed against the elevation of human teleology into a quasi-divine
spherewhat Spinoza calls anthropomorphism. This anthropomorphic
conception of GodNature renders absolute human conceptions of
teleology that are intrinsically egoistic. According to some strands
within recent Spinoza scholarship (i.e., Smith and, to some extent,
Nadler), the Ethics ultimately extols rather than questions humanitys
egoistic and teleological superiority over the heteronomy of God
Nature. No wonder, then, that Spinoza emerges as a Kantian avant
la lettre.10 We will see that this Kantian view of Spinozas conatus is
based on a reading of Spinoza as a Hobbesian thinker.
This view argues that the Ethics reaffirms the centrality and
superiority of human agency that the Copernican revolution had
threatened to overturn. The earth might no longer be the center of
the universe. Human epistemology and morality, however, vouch
for the supremacy of mans rational constitution over anything
that might be subsumed under the category of the merely natural
(the body) or irrational (God). Smith thus argues that Spinoza only
undermined teleology to debunk the role of God or nature in the
life of the world: The denial of any sort of natural teleology or
divine providence has an ethical corollary. The Ethics deflates the
idea that our moral judgments of approval and disapproval have
any counterpart in nature.11 From the perspective of this interpre-
tation, Spinoza indeed anticipates Kants further development of
Descartes mindbody divide. Spinoza does not question this divide.
Rather, writes Smith, Spinoza maintains that there are at least two
different and irreducible conceptual vocabularies, a language of bod-
ies in motion and a language of minds with reasons and purposes.12
Smith conflates Spinozas approach with a Cartesian hierarchy that
102 M I CHAE L M ACK
subjects the assumed irrationality of the body to the purported

purposefulness of the mind to challenge contemporary thought
and scientific inquiry.13
Instead of marshalling Spinoza as a bulwark for the defense of
an antiquated conception of what should constitute rationality, this
chapter follows the approach of the neurologist Antonio Damasio.
While having previously discussed the scientific inadequacy of the
Cartesian mindbody divide in his study Descartes Error, Damasio,
in Looking for Spinoza, argues that Spinozas Ethics develops a social
theory that dovetails with recent scientific findings about the ho-
meostatic relationship between the mind and the body.14 According
to Damasio, Spinozas antiteleological thought helps advance a
nonhierarchical understanding of humanitys place within nature.
In what sense does Spinoza criticize teleology? His philosophy is
antiteleological insofar as it refuses to recognize a purposeful de-
sign in nature. As a corollary of his critique of teleology, Spinoza
abandons a prioritization of the mind over and above the body. This
nonhierarchical stance moves his thought into close vicinity of that
of Darwin and Freud.15 Following Damasios approach, this chapter
focuses on Spinozas attempt to abandon a mindbody dualism. It
is this element in Spinozas thought that accounts for his central-
ity in twentieth-century philosophical discussions such as those of
Nussbaum, Negri, and Deleuze.
Not only did Spinoza align the working of the mind with the
working of the body; he also established an invariable link between
the equilibrium of the individual and that of the society to which
he or she belongs. This connection between the biological and the
epistemological on the individual scale thus prepares the ground
for the larger sphere of intersubjective relations that connect the
preservation of the self to the survival of the other. As a neurologist,
Damasio emphasizes the scientific validity of Spinozas social philoso-
phy. The biological reality of self-preservation, writes Damasio,
leads to virtue because in our inalienable need to maintain ourselves
we must, of necessity, help preserve other selves.16 The two related
expressions perfection and virtue within the Ethics serve to amplify the
signifying field of that concept that describes the future viability of
lifes ongoing existence, namely, the central word conatus.
This article thus interprets Spinozas notion of perfection not in
terms of teleology but in terms of sustainability on both an individual

and a social scale. The main social significance of this undertaking
consists in analyzing how a Spinozan vision of society aims at the
prevention of various defensive reactions, which constitute the main
cause of racism and other prejudices.17 An analysis of Spinozas
biological approach toward social theory paves the way for a novel
account of human agency that does not prioritize the concerns of
the mind over those of the body; rather both entities emerge as
being intrinsically interconnected. Bringing a contemporary scien-
tific perspective to bear on philosophical issues does not only help
diminish the often assumed divide between the humanities and the
sciences; this hybrid approach also has significant repercussions for a
novel conception of the relationship between philosophy and social
criticism. The aims of this undertaking are accomplished through
an analysis of how different communities may come to realize
that their respective truth claims are not absolute but rather have a
certain narrative element to their foundation. Toward this end, this
chapter analyzes Spinozas attempt at building a society in which the
self and the other are not in competition but are instead dependent
on each other. Does this narrative notion of identity deserve to be
called relativist? Rather than being a relativist, Spinoza is a realist.
He is antirelativist because he criticizes an epistemology that trims
down reality to its conception of the world.
A skeptic might, however, object that Spinozas philosophy
only had revolutionary impact within the self-enclosed field of
biblical hermeneutics. The innovative force of Spinozas thought
was, however, not confined to the realm of Bible criticism. It had
a much larger reach. As Jonathan I. Israel has recently pointed out,
Spinozas revolution overtly challenged the three principal pillars
of medieval and early modern societymonarchy, aristocracy, and
the Churchgoing some way to overturning all three.18 For an ac-
curate discussion of the religious critique of theology as politics, it
is therefore necessary to discuss Spinozas ontological critique of all
kinds of epistemological mediations, be they theological, economic,
sociopolitical, or scientific. At this point, he breaks with Cartesianism.
It is therefore worth presenting a brief account of Spinozas depar-
ture from the epistemological foundations that Descartes inherited
from Plato.
Spinozas Critique of an Absolutist Epistemology

The middle of the seventeenth century witnessed the emergence of a
new age. This new era set out to introduce philosophy as the master
discourse that would from then on increasingly shape the outlook
of Western European society on an all-encompassing level. It would
not only have an impact on academic matters but would saliently
contribute to new developments in divergent fields such as the ap-
plied sciences and economics. In short, from the mid-seventeenth
century onward, philosophy attempted to dethrone theology as an
intellectual tool that was providing the ideological basis for critical
inquiry into all kinds of areas within society.
Whereas Descartes affirmed the validity of the established order
in both political and theological matters (as he preeminently did at
the opening of his Meditation on the First Philosophy of 1641), Spinozas
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) advocated the application of a
scientific method to the study of biblical texts. In the Ethics (which
was published posthumously in 1677), Spinoza would extend Des-
cartess rationalist approach from the field of Bible criticism to that
of theology, anthropology, politics, and social analysis.
While emphasizing the distinction between philosophy, on one
hand, and theology as well as politics, on the other, the metaphorical
description with which Descartes characterizes the novelty of his
philosophical method nevertheless implies the totalizing potential
of his undertaking. In what ways does Descartess use of metaphor
undercut his seemingly humble self-limitation of philosophy as a
self-enclosed entity that pays its respect to the spiritual and worldly
powers that be? In his Discourse on Method (1663), Descartes compares
his philosophical approach to the pulling down of an old house: And
just as in pulling down an old house we usually preserve the debris
to serve in building up another, so in destroying all those opinions
which I considered to be ill-founded, I made various observations
and acquired many experiences, which have since been of use to me
in establishing those which are more certain.19 The destruction of
the old building serves as the foundation for the construction of the
new, which promises a more all-encompassing sense of certainty.
A house, however, symbolizes a unified whole made up of particu-
lar entities. Descartes is thus at pains to emphasize that the abolition at
work in his philosophy does not threaten the theological foundations

of the body politic. Scholars have in fact analyzed the ways in which
Descartess writing supports rather than undermines the cultural
and social relevance of the Roman Catholic Church. He supports
the status of the Church through his adherence to Suarezs novel
theological argument, according to which there is a radical divide
between the world of nature and the sphere of divine grace. This
theology has been dubbed a theology of pure nature to distinguish
it from Augustines and Thomas Aquinass conception of nature as
being capable of receiving the divine gift of grace.
Descartess philosophical dualism between body and mind may
be the offspring of the theological divide between the realms of
pure nature and grace. According to Jean-Luc Marion, Descartes in
fact radicalized Suarezs theology of pure nature. How did he do
so? By erasing a certain semantic meaning from the term capacitas:
Augustine and Aquinas used this expression not to denote natures
and humanitys autonomous capabilities (i.e., natures/humanitys
independent power) but its openness toward the receipt of the gift
of divine grace. Marion argues that Descartes pushed the semantic
variation until capacitas was de facto understood as a strict synonym
of potentia.20 Potentia, however, describes a purely natural sphere:
the realm of natures autonomy that Suarez and, following him,
Descartes strictly separate from the workings of divine grace. Could
it be that Descartess rationalist approach is in fact a theological one,
one that radically departs from Augustines and Aquinass theology
of grace but nonetheless develops and radicalizes Suarezs modern
theology of pure nature?
Descartes endeavored to sever the union between theology and
philosophy, as illustrated by his immanent use of the traditionally
theological term capacitas. Has his undertaking been successful?
Marion polemically asks, Could Descartes be an unacknowledged
theologian of pure nature?21 This seems to be the case. Marion
points out that starting with Descartes, the relation between man
and God is apprehended by modern metaphysics in terms of power
(pouvoir) and capacity (puissance),22 and he argues that this Cartesian
development is in large part thanks to the theology of pure na-
ture.23 What are the implications of this discussion for a better un-
derstanding of Descartess revolution? It may well be that Descartes
106 M I CHAEL M ACK
attempts to demolish one theological dwelling space (the one built

by Augustine and Aquinas when they formulated a theology that
allows for natures openness toward the gift of divine grace). He
preserves its debris, however, to have the necessary materials for the
construction of a new one.
Indeed, Descartes avers that the house he is in the process of
tearing down has nothing to do with the societal architectonics of
both an absolutist monarchy and the Roman Catholic Churchs
claim to infallible truth. At the opening of his Meditations on First
Philosophy, he thus takes great care to depict the philosophical as a
self-enclosed field of inquiry whose critical potential stops short at
questioning the political and theological powers that be. He then
proceeds to emphasize that his mindbody divide serves as an epis-
temological bastion in the support of Leo Xs orthodoxy. As regards
the soul, Descartes argues, although many have considered that
it is not easy to know its nature, and some have even dared to say
that human reasons have convinced us that it would perish with the
body, and that faith alone could believe the contrary, nevertheless,
inasmuch as the Lateran Council held under Leo X (in the eighth
session) condemns these tenets, and as Leo expressly ordains Chris-
tian philosophers to refute their arguments and to employ all their
powers in making known the truth, I have ventured in this treatise
to undertake the same task.24 The supremacy of the mind over
the body proves the immortality of the soul and thus reaffirms the
social order that divides those who work menially from those who
are engaged in nonmental work.
By 1660, however, Spinoza (no doubt spurred by his expulsion
from the Jewish community in 1656) abandoned Descartess purported
differentiation between philosophical discovery, on one hand, and
religious as well as social life, on the other. To improve the welfare
of humanity, Spinoza argued, the philosopher cannot avoid address-
ing human issues in their entirety. He thus did away not only with
the traditional philosophicaltheological dualism between body and
mind but also with philosophys self-restriction to a limited field of
social influence. Spinoza attempted to make philosophy relevant
for the life of the people. It was therefore no longer the occupation
of a privileged group. Instead, philosophy became a democratic
endeavor.25
By arguing that the mind cannot fully control the life of the body,
Spinoza in fact undermined the societal force of various ideologies
that have their foundation in specific epistemological assumptions
(be they theological, philosophical, scientific, or economic). In this
manner, he opened the way for an understanding of humanity that
does not force abstract standards on the specific contexts of human
minds and bodies. He therefore did not merely differentiate theology
from philosophy. If he had done so, he would simply have followed
in Descartess footsteps. Crucially, Spinoza marked off philosophical
strivings and scientific claims to epistemological certainty from the
inevitable uncertainties of embodied social life. Had he only driven a
wedge between theology and philosophy, Spinoza would have been
close to replacing the monolithic assumptions of the former with
those of the latter. Instead, Spinoza questioned the validity of all
kinds of human epistemologies, thus affirming the minds lack of
control over both the individual body and the body politic.
The Spinozan critique of various kinds of intellectual endeav-
ors (not just those of theology) thus resulted in a blurring of the
boundaries that demarcate the realm of sensuous enjoyment from
the realm of cerebral work: All these things [relating to both bodily
enjoyment and cerebral work], Spinoza argues, indeed, show clearly
that both the decision of the mind and the appetites and the deter-
mination of the body by nature exist togetheror rather are one
and the same thing, which we call a decision when it is considered
under, and explained through, the attribute of thought, and which
we call determination when it is considered under the attribute of
extension and deduced from the laws of motion and rest (Ethics III,
P2).26 As a corollary, Spinoza reveals that the decisions of the mind
are nothing but the appetites themselves (Ethics III, P2). In this way,
purposeful, namely, teleological, thought emerges as nothing else but
appetitive: By the end [ finem] for the sake of which we do something
[ facimus] I understand appetite [appetitum intellego] (Ethics IV, D7).
Unpacking this short sentence helps us understand the relationship
between Spinozas critique of teleology and his deconstruction of
the Cartesian mindbody divide. The telos of the final (finem) aim
itself constitutes the motif force of the appetitive (appetitum). To
be able to do something (facimus), we rely on the bodily function
of the visceral (appetitum). The geometrical method thus serves as
108 M I CHAEL M ACK
an instrument for the self-reflection of the mind (intellego) on its

dependence on bodily desire. Self-consciousness can therefore not
do without desire, precisely because it is desires self-awareness.
Spinozas philosophical inquiry into the dependence of the mind on
the body has crucial consequences for a reanimation of his social and
cultural theory. This issue will be discussed in the following section.
The Theological Foundations of Teleological Thought

Critics have so far not sufficiently discussed how Spinozas critique
of theology works as social criticism. Why does Spinoza broach the
issue of anthropomorphism? What exactly is the target of his criti-
cal inquiry? He takes issue with the teleological thought inherent
in anthropomorphic conceptions of God. According to Spinoza,
neither philosophy nor theology exists in a self-enclosed sphere of
influence. Rather, any type of epistemology that plays a dominant
role in a particular society at a particular time inevitably shapes
specific social relations. Significantly, Spinoza discusses theological
anthropomorphism in the context of prejudices that permeate dif-
ferent societal fabrics. He analyzes how social prejudices depend
on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act,
as men do [homines ... ut ipsos], on account of an end; indeed, they
maintain as certain that God himself directs all things to some certain
end, for they say that God has made all things for man, and man that
he might worship God [Deum ... ut ipsum] (Ethics I, Introduction to
Ap.). Here Spinoza criticizes not so much the worship of God but
human self-adulation. The parallelism between the phrases homines
.. . ut ipsos and Deum ... ut ipsum serves to emphasize precisely this
point: humans attribute human forms of behavior to Gods nature
because they perceive themselves as divine. Spinoza thus reveals
religious worship of God as deification of the self.
This adulation of the self by the self hinges on the espousal of
teleology as the sine qua non for the definition of what distinguishes
the human from the nonhuman and thus the divine from that which
lacks divinity. Everything that belongs to the order of nature, as per-
ceived in terms of Gods creation, supposedly strives toward a telos,
toward an end. Various social prejudices gain momentum, thanks to
the philosophical positing of teleology as the certain criteria by means
of which we have to distinguish between logical, namely, theological,
forms of life and those that are illogical and thus excluded from the
order of Gods creation. In this way, social prejudices result from the
equation of the rational (and thus Godly) with teleology. Those forms
of life alone are worthy of sustenance and evince a goal-oriented
structure. The teleological thus functions as the linchpin around
which the anthropomorphic conception of God and nature revolves.
Spinozas Ethics focuses on how dichotomous ways of thinking are
an outcome of perceiving the divine from the perspective of teleology.
By enthroning the finality of the goal as the main criterion of rational
action, society intellectually justifies all kinds of exploitative power
relations. Under Spinozas scrutiny, teleology emerges as a cover-up for
the pursuit of self-interest that disregards the well-being of the other.
The end of purpose-driven action coincides with the single-minded
pursuit of ones advantage in the present, without paying attention
to the disadvantageous consequences that might accrue in the fu-
ture. The anthropomorphic conception of a goal-directed God thus
provides theological justification for mans domination over nature:
It follows, second, that men act always on account of an end [ finem],

namely on account of their advantage [utile], which they want....
Hence they [humans] consider all natural things [omnia naturalia]
as means to their own advantage....For after they considered
things as means, they could not believe that the things had made
themselves [Nam postquam res, ut media, consideraverunt, credere not
potuerunt, easdem se ipsas fecisse]; but from the means they were
accustomed to prepare for themselves, they had to infer that there
was a ruler, or a number of rulers, of Nature [aliquos naturae
rectores], endowed with human freedom who had taken care of
things for them, and made all things for their use. (Ethics I, Ap. 1)
The end (finem) of human action describes that which the self
conceives of as being useful (utile) for itself. Spinoza does not, of
course, devalue self-advantage. What he thus criticizes in teleological
thought is not self-interest per se; rather he excoriates those modes
of perception that represent the self as the center of life. Accord-
ing to Spinoza, it is certainly not wrong that humanity lives on the
fruits of nature. He criticizes certain teleological modes of thought,
then, for divinizing a utilitarian relationship toward the external
110 M I CHAEL M ACK
natural world. Though it is worth emphasizing that Spinoza does

not take issue with utilitarianism as such, it is equally important to
show how he excoriates both the loss of perspective and the logical
fallacies that go along with a self-inflation of humanity. The target
of Spinozas critique of anthropomorphism is not theology as such
but Descartess conception of pure nature that subjects the merely
mechanical natural world to the power and will of Gods representa-
tive on earth: humanity.
Countering the anthropomorphism within the theology of pure
nature, Spinoza makes clear how humanitys will and power (as
manifested in teleology) self-destroys itself at the point where it loses
track of human limitations. It thus sacrifices the sustainability of life
to the quasi-divine power of redemption that posits in the future
the attainment of its goals. Spinozas rationalism is not hostile to
theology as such. Why is this so? Because Spinoza understands by
reason a faculty that limits the unlimited reign of the passions and
thus curbs the exhilarating presumptions of humanitys omnipotence
and omniscience.27 What Spinoza thus criticizes as theology is that
element that endows humanity with the domination over nature. The
natural world does not have an independent existence. Instead, nature
(omnia naturalia) serves exclusively as means (media) for the self-pres-
ervation of humanity. Spinoza therefore unmasks Suarezs and Des-
cartess theology of pure nature as anthropomorphism and teleology.
At this point, self-preservation appears in a rather ambiguous
light. Crucially, teleology instantiates an irrational kind of conatus:
here the self preserves itself to the detriment of those circumstances
and forces that enable the survival of the other, but this exclusive
strategy has the potential to hit back, mirroring the flight trajectory
of a boomerang. Does Spinozas notion of the conatus adumbrate a
critique of societal self-destruction? Theodor Adorno has implicitly
raised this question while discussing Elias Canettis response to the
Nazi genocide.28 In an important conversation with Canetti, Adorno
has drawn attention to Spinozas thought on self-preservation:
Horkheimer and I have in fact analysed the problem of survival in

the Dialectic of Enlightenment. In so doing we came upon the realisa-
tion that this principle of survival, which you [i.e., Canetti] in your
terminology call the moment of survival, namely the situation of
survival in the succinct senseas it was for the first time, one could
say in a classical manner, formulated by Spinozathat this motive of
survival, transforms itself into a destructive force, into the destructive
and always at the same time into the self-destructive force if it turns
wild, as it were, if it thus abandons the relationships to those others
which stand opposed to it.29
Adorno here astutely points out that Spinoza is careful to empha-

size that the will to survival is a social phenomenon. It has to be
inclusive of others. If it turns exclusive, it will pave the way for
self-destruction, and then the immunity of the individual will dis-
integrate into autoimmunity. Adorno underscores this point when
he says that this motive of survival, transforms itself into ... the
destructive and always at the same time into the self-destructive
force if it ... abandons the relationships to those others which
stand opposed to it. Adornos interpretation of Spinozas conatus
has an illuminating bearing on an accurate understanding of the
autoimmunity or self-destruction inherent in some aspects of our
contemporary global society. Thus Derrida has recently discussed
how autoimmune processes such as the strange behaviour where
a living being, in quasi-suicidal fashion, itself works to destroy its
own protection30 invariably refer back to their opposite: to Spinozist
attempts at self-preservation. These self-destructive processes result
from triumphal declarations of moral, epistemological, military,
and spiritual superiority of one societal formation over the one that
poses, or is seen to pose, as its enemy. This awareness of ones own
triumph accompanies the perceived increase of ones power. Spinoza
shows how proclamations of ones own superiority often go hand
in hand with a loss of reality.
What causes this societal drift toward unreality? A given society
that seeks to establish its supremacy over and above other societies
claims to significance attempts to make reality conform to its epis-
temological standards. An inability to engage with epistemologies
that differ from that of ones own conception thus does not evince
realism. On the contrary, it indicates relativism, precisely because
it does not come to terms with the differing and always changing
complexities of diverse social realities. The denial that the external
world exists as an inviolable entityas formulated by Descartes
in his radicalization of Suarezs theology of pure naturejustifies

political actions that are based on the principle of domination (ali-
quos rectores).31 This hegemony deprives nature of animation (i.e.,
Descartess mechanical understanding of the nonhuman world),
turning it into a zombielike means that does not have a life of its
own (nam postquam res, ut media, consideraverunt, credere non potuerunt,
easdem se ipsas fecisse).
The anthropomorphic, namely, teleological, conception of God
does not only give rise to the ruthless and self-destructive exploitation
of nature; it also lays the foundation for violence and ethnocentric
discrimination within society itself. Teleological thought pitches the
telos of one community against that of another. The difference in
religious worship thus furthers war between different social units,
each of which deifies its specific way of life that goes along with its
specific (anthropomorphic) conception of God. Under this teleologi-
caltheological constellation, particularity comes into conflict with
universality. Self-preservation mutates to self-destruction at the point
at which goal-directed behavior turns exclusive. Within this process,
the self ignores that the pursuit of perfection does not coincide with
the single-minded attainment of a goal that it set for itself as a self-
enclosed entity; rather, perfection has to do with that which enables
the sustainability of life, that is to say, with the avoidance of social
exclusion and the abandonment of defensive reactions that aim to
affirm ones superiority over another.
Critique as the Self-Reexive Awareness of Subjective Fictions

A particularity that seeks to realize its goals while defending itself
against the aspirations of other particular social as well as cultural
units endangers its own survival precisely by focusing exclusively on
its own telos. As Etienne Balibar has pointed out, Spinoza employs
the term ingenium to denote the singularity not only of individuals
but also of ethnic groups.32 The deification of the specific teleology
that structures the life of a particular social group eventuates in
the war of all against all. Spinoza thus argues, contra Hobbes, that
violence does not originate within the state of nature; rather, it is
the outcome of confusing those intellectual constructs that serve
to represent a singular entity with the expression of reality as such.
The real, however, is not only singular but also diverse.
Teleological constructions about all final causes are nothing but

human fictions [figmenta] (Ethics I, Ap. 2). Spinoza does not want
to abolish these fictions. If he did, he would be hostile to diversity
because it is exactly in the figuration of these figmenta that the imagi-
nation shapes the singular cultural formations of different ethnic
groups. Instead, Spinoza critiques an inability to detect the fictional
elements that underpin human modes of reasoning. He makes
teleological forms of thought responsible for a lack of self-awareness.
Self-reflexivity makes the self aware of the fictional foundations of
what it takes to be the truth (be that nature or God). A social unit
that makes absolute its specific teleological conception of the world
deifies itself and thus loses self-consciousness of the nonabsolutist,
namely, limited, and thus desire-based texture of its epistemes: So
it has happened that each of them [individuals as well as ethnic
groups] has thought up from his own temperament different ways
of worshiping God, so that God might love him above all the rest
[ex suo ingenio excogitaverit, ut Deus eos supra reliquos diligeret], and
direct the whole of Nature according to the needs of their blind
desire and insatiable greed (Ethics I, Ap. 1). Here Spinoza analyzes
how the teleology qua theology that justifies mans domination
over nature has an immediate impact on the way in which different
communities interact with each other. Instead of recognizing the
fictional character of their specific social imaginings, each group
claims superiority over other groups (ut Deus eos supra reliquos dilig-
eret). This touting of supremacy refers to theology to back up the
accuracy of its statements with the absolute authority that only the
name of deity seems to be able to provide.
Significantly, Spinoza focuses on the mind (excogitaverit) as the
source of this confusion of particular inclination (ex suo ingenio) with
the absolute truth value issuing from God. Rather than providing
an accurate account of reality as it could be, here the mind will
transform potentially peaceful interactions between humanity and
nature as well as potential types of cooperation between different
ethnic groups into violent encounters in which particular entities
destroy themselves while fighting for their predominance.
Critics have so far ignored the way in which Spinozas critique
of theology as teleology and thus anthropomorphism ironically re-
lates to Descartess and Hobbess voluntarism. A notable exception
is Jerome B. Schneewind, who has drawn attention to the fact that

Spinozas philosophy restored the split, perpetrated by voluntarist
natural lawyers, between politics (prefigured by Duns Scotuss view
of Gods unlimited and arbitrary power) and ethics. Spinoza replaced
Descartess will with a notion of wisdom that strives for both the
joyful and the virtuous: Each increase in perfection is an increase
in both our joy and virtue.33 In contrast to Descartes, Spinoza
maintained that virtue was not superimposed on nature by reason,
God, or political power; rather, the virtuous coincides with the joy-
ful fulfillment of each individuals different natural potential.34 This
appreciation of an infinite variety of different forms of life makes
for the differentia specifica of his understanding of self-preservation
(conatus) from that of Hobbes.
Hobbess political philosophy is based on a dualism between
the state of nature, on one hand, and the politics of reason, on the
other. It is this dualistic paradigm that will later form the basis of
Kants idealism.35 Kant transforms Hobbess dualism between status
naturalis and status civilis into one between the state of nature and
the state of freedom. By freedom, however, Kant understands a
radical independence from any reliance on the goods of this world.
Kantian rationality, with its unbridgeable gulf between the realms
of freedom and nature, sets out to demonstrate the worthlessness of
bare life (as pure nature). He thus adheres to Suarezs and Descartess
theology of pure nature. Reason dominates and overcomes nature
by humiliating desires for objects in the external world. Kant deemed
these desires pathological. Kants famous law of autonomy helped
enact such subjugation of the forces of the body to the body politic.
Here Hobbes clearly meets Kant.
Both Kant and Hobbes attempt to distill a moral kernel out of
the Christian heritage. This moral essence should thus form the basis
of their respective political philosophies. Both emphasize, as Leo
Strauss has shown, conscience over and against action: In believing
that the moral attitude, conscience, intention, is of more importance
than the action, Hobbes is at one with Kant as with the Christian
tradition.36 Spinozas ethology, by contrast, focuses on actions and
their outcome rather than on the inward sphere of conviction.
In his work on politics and religion, Spinoza, as Leo Strauss has
shown, is heavily indebted to Averroes in that he does not completely
disqualify the religious dimension within political life.37 Why does

Spinoza abstain from secular radicalism? He values that aspect in dif-
ferent forms of religion that give rise to actions that are supportive
of what he understands by ethics. Hobbes and Kant, however, do
not allow for a religious element that would contradict their con-
viction about the absolute supremacy of the secular state. In this
way, Spinozas break with the immediately preceding tradition was
much less radical than that of Hobbes.38 It is to some extent due to
Spinozas nonhostile attitude toward religion that his understanding
of the conatus differs from that of Hobbes. In contrast to Hobbes,
Spinoza argues that the self-preservation of a given human com-
munity depends on the preservation of the whole of humanity and
nature. Spinozas is thus a holistic approach. Unlike Hobbes, he does
not divide humanity into different groups, differentiating between a
state of nature and a state of civilization or between religious com-
munities and those who have attained the state of Hobbess rational
absolutist monarchy.
Spinoza appreciates a plural world consisting of different social
and religious ways of life. As Schneewind put it, knowledge of God
is the highest good, and one persons possession of that knowledge
obviously does not lessen anothers share. We need not compete for
the true good. We would not be led into conflict if we all understood
this.39 Spinoza critiques teleology on account of its exclusivity. The
mind turns passionate and thus prone to violence if it focuses on
the exclusive rather than on the inclusive. By combining virtue with
joy, Spinoza bridges the gulf between the universal and the singular
as well as the apparent gap that lies between the ethical and the
political. Descartes perpetuates this separation between politics and
ethics. This is squarely in line with his conception of philosophy as
a self-enclosed entity, as discussed earlier.
Whereas Schneewind analyzes the differences between Descartes
and Spinoza, Michael Allen Gillespie tends to see both philosophers
as representative of the voluntarist heritage with which modernity
had to come to terms at its inception in the seventeenth century.
As Gillespie (following Hans Blumenberg) has shown, Descartes
idealizes the power of the human will to create a bastion that could
prove capable of fending off Gods deleterious interference with the
workings of the mind.40 The feared potentia absoluta that had been
a divine prerogative in the voluntaristic theology of Ockham and

Duns Scottus became a human attribute in Descartess confirmation
of the wills or minds superiority over the body:
Ego cogito ergo sum is the bulwark that Descartes raises up against
the omnipotent God and the radical skepticism that he engenders.
It is his bastion for the defense of human reason and freedom.
This principle, however, is not merely a bastion or refugeit is
also the Archimedean point upon which Descartes stands in his
attempt to move the world, the basis for the universal science
with which he seeks to win back the earth for man by dethroning
this arbitrary and irrational God and making man the master and
possessor of nature.41
Whether it is the human mind as will or the absolute power of

God within teleological constructions, nature always figures as
that remainder of imperfection that has to be overcome. Only the
subjugation of nature under the willful agency of either the divine
(Ockhams and Scotts voluntarism) or the human (Descartess ra-
tionalism) guarantees the implementation of a purposeful scheme
of things. Spinoza analyzes the subjective and thus fictional element
within either theological or philosophical types (or both) of teleol-
ogy that profile themselves as objective proofs of natures deficiency.
His critique of theology thus amounts to a critical inquiry into the
fallacy of the mind that takes itself to be absolute and affirms its
supremacy over that from which it sees itself separated: be it the
body or the external material world.
Spinoza subjects the affects to this style of geometric analysis
not to discard the affective. He clearly knows that this would be
impossible.42 Instead, the point of his dissection of feelings consists
in showing how they are closely tied to the workings of the mind.
He thus addresses those who prefer to curse or laugh at the affects
and actions of men, rather than to understand them (Ethics III, Pref-
ace). Anthropological research has shown that laugher functions as
symbolic transposition of a feeling of superiority in precisely those
contexts in which the one who laughs abandons a relationship of
empathetic understanding that can be found in enlightened and thus
enlightening forms of humor.43 Laughter at affections in a way that
precludes comprehension amounts to an assumption of supremacy,

which, as we have seen, Spinoza criticizes in anthropomorphic
conceptions of God. This touting of superiority accompanies de-
fensive reactions as regards perceived threats either in nature or in
the intrahuman social sphere. The effects of these actions are equal
to those of aggressive offences: they appear to be defensive to the
one who perpetrates them, but they are clearly offensive to the one
who has to endure them.
Voluntarism as the Autoimmunity of Teleology

Descartess voluntaristic rationalism reinforces the defensive strategies
that an anthropomorphic conception of God justifies theologically.
Spinoza emphasizes the originality of his appraisal of the affects.
Descartes did not pay much attention to the emotive aspects of
humanity:
But no one, to my knowledge, has determined the nature and

powers of the affects... . The celebrated Descartes, although he
too believed that the mind has absolute power over its own ac-
tions, nevertheless sought to explain human affects through their
first causes, and at the same time to show the way in which the
mind can have absolute dominion [absolutum .. . imperium] over its
affects. But in my opinion, he showed nothing but the cleverness
of his understanding, as I will show in the proper place [sui ingenii
acumen ostendit, ut suo loco demonstrabo]. (Ethics III, Preface)
Spinoza reveals Descartess declaration of the absolute dominion

(absolutum imperium) of the mind over the affects as nothing else but a
sign of subjective preference rather than objective analysis. In a subtle
move, he contrasts his perspective (mea sententia) with Descartess
confirmation of the minds absolute domination over arbitrary
and merely subjective emotions. The polite style of the preceding
excerpt does not diminish the force of its ironic tone. This becomes
abundantly clear if one reads the original Latin text. The showiness
(ostendit) of Descartess intellectualism mirrors the imperial (imperium)
gesture with which the mind affirms its supremacy (absolutum) over
the affects that it associates with the body. Spinoza praises Descartess
intellect (acumen) while in the same breath belittling it as a sign of
118 M I CHAEL M ACK
a temperamental attitude (sui ingenii) rather than an instrument to

be employed in the quest for objective knowledge.
To be sure, Spinoza does not excoriate individual inclinations
and idiosyncratic preferences. What he takes issue with is the en-
deavor to dress up particular opinions as if they were universally
valid truths that make everything that contradicts them or opposes
them appear intellectually inferior. As he shows in its proper place (ut
suo loco demonstrabo), namely, at the opening of Book V, Descartess
enthronement of the will as the minds absolute control over the
body radicalizes a Stoic belief in the intellectual control over the life
of the emotions.44 In a quasi-objectivist mode, Descartes locates the
headquarter of the minds, namely, the wills, empire in a specific
anatomical point, the pineal gland, by whose aid the mind is aware
of all the motions [cujus ope Mens motus omnes] aroused in the body
and of external objects, and which the mind can move in various ways
simply by willing (Ethics V, Preface). By pinpointing the source of
the wills power in the specific cerebral location of the pineal gland,
Descartes objectifies his subjective theory of voluntarism. Here the
brain (of which the pineal gland forms a part) serves as a concrete
location by which we can quasi-experimentally fathom the anatomical
mechanism that enacts the omnipotent working of the mind (cujus
ope Mens motus omnes). In Spinozas account, Descartess objectivist
method mirrors that which it describes: the wills absolute domina-
tion over the inclinations of the body.45 Spinoza characterizes the
salient point of his own originality as precisely the abandonment of
any teleological opposition between that which is to be dominated
and the dominant, the inferior and the superior, the perfect and the
imperfect, the goal and the goalless.
By employing a nonprejudicial approach in his analysis of the
emotions, Spinoza sets out to question a hierarchical divide between
superiority and inferiority that structures philosophical, scientific,
and theological forms of teleology. He thus detects in the teleologi-
cal the structural kernel that shapes superstitious kinds of actions
and thoughts. According to Deleuzes interpretation of the Ethics,
superstition is everything that keeps us cut off from our power of
action and continually diminishes it.46 What, however, is the super-
stitious in Spinozas view? As the preceding discussion has shown,
Spinoza defines teleology as the deification and thus universalization,
namely, objectification, of subjective thoughts and opinions. This

making absolute of ones own will and desire characterizes the
anthropomorphic conception of God, which Spinoza criticizes as
both theology and superstition. In this way, he unmasks the super-
stitious foundations of Descartess voluntaristic rationalism, which
in turn is a secular (i.e., philosophical) translation and transmuta-
tion of Ockhams and Duns Scotts theological discourse about a
voluntaristic God.
Like the teleological, the superstitious thrives on the hierarchi-
cal divide between superiority and inferiority. That which opposes
the willing subject becomes demoted to the inferior. Countering
such supposition of a divide in the sublunar world between what
is faulty and what is perfect, Spinoza does away with a terminol-
ogy that aligns embodied life along a hierarchical horizon. Rather
than arguing that particular objects have particular shortcomings,
Spinoza affirms the flawless character of each living being. Spinoza
makes this point clear in his letter of January 5, 1665, to William
van Blyenbergh when he writes that everything that is, considered
in itself, and without regard to anything else, includes perfection,
which always extends in each thing as far as does the essence of the
thing itself.47 What may strike us as imperfect amounts in reality to
nothing else but an organisms vulnerability to specific internal as
well as external effects. In this way, there is nothing in nature that is
evil or poisonous as such. The deleterious effects of any particular
substance do not make up its constitutional core; rather, an individual
proves destructive not through his or her existence, which we might
construe abstractly as the essence of his or her character, but rather
by the particular violent turn his or her actions take in any given situ-
ation. Likewise, a mushroom is not poisonous as such; otherwise, it
would poison itself. Spinoza tries to persuade us that we distinguish
between abstract concepts and our understanding of ever-changing
particular entities that form a substantial part of our everyday lives.
We might be harmed by eating a poisonous mushroom, but Spinoza
warns us of taking this effect it has on us as the static character of
the plant itself.48 The mushroom in question proves deleterious to
our digestive system. It does not, by contrast, damage our sense of
eyesight while observing it.
As it is, nature has already come into being within a state of
perfection. But my reason is this [Sed mea haec est ratio], Spinoza
affirms, nothing happens in Nature that can be attributed to any
defect in it, for nature is always the same, and its virtue and power
of acting are everywhere one and the same, that is, the laws and
rules of Nature, according to which all things happen, and change
from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same [ex
unis formis in alias mutantur, sunt ubique & semper eadem] (Ethics III,
Preface). Thus differentiating his thought from that of Descartes,
Spinoza draws the readers attention to sociological, political, and
medical and psychological factors that vitiate both the well-being of
individuals and the welfare of entire societies. Significantly, Spinoza
does not frame his analysis in an objectivist style. On the contrary,
he opens his remarks by paying attention to the subjective position
of his argument (sed mea haec est ratio). There is an apparent para-
doxical tension between the subjective formulation of his reasoning
and the content of the reasoning itself. For what Spinoza advances
in this dense paragraph is not an argument for the separateness of
individual subject positions but an affirmation of their intrinsic in-
terconnectedness, of their underlying unity (& ex unis formis in alias
mutantur, sunt ubique & semper eadem).
A hierarchical form of teleological thought denies this inter-
relationship between different subject positions. For it attributes a
praiseworthy goal to a single and thus specific entity, whose telos it
contrasts with the faultiness of purpose within another social foun-
dation. Teleology as superstition thus sheds light on the destructive
passions of the mind. The mind operates via affects at precisely the
point at which it turns exclusive. This exclusivity is only seemingly
rational. In fact, it not only undermines the welfare of the other, which
it sees as either a threat or a competitor; in the end, it destroys the
self together with the other because both are intrinsically intercon-
nected. This is why calculation and friendship cannot be separated
from each other in Spinozas account of intersubjectivity.
From the perspective of self-interest, the defensive reaction of
warlike behavior is not an option; rather friendship truly instantiates
the dictates of self-preservation (conatus). In striking contradiction to
Hobbess anthropology, according to which man is a wolf to man,
Spinoza argues that we are in need of each other as if we depended
on the help of a deity. Once the anthropomorphic conception has
been abandoned, which gives rise to the exclusivity of teleological

thought, we realize that not one of us is able to survive independently.
We are all in need of each other. The anthropomorphic conception
of God attempts to cover up this needfulness by endowing a spe-
cific social and ethnic group with a redemptive teleology (and thus
with quasi-divine backing), which it posits as a lack in other human
communities.
In this way, Spinozas dictum that man is a God to man (Ethics
IV, P35S) only attains its full significance if one bears in mind Hobbess
proclamation that man is a wolf to man.49 Spinoza does not deny
that humanity sometimes tends to act in a self-destructive manner,
as if it were its own carnivore (i.e., a wolf ). However, he emphasizes
the as-if factor. Destructive, and therefore self-destructive, behavior
does not come naturally. Unlike Hobbes, Spinoza does not posit a
state of nature that is characterized by unrestrained violence. He
does not share Hobbess conception of the state of nature as the
war of all against all.50 The reason for this is that his understanding
of nature is different from Hobbess understanding. According to
Spinoza, nature is a force that connects rather than divides. Spinoza
emphasizes his holistic and nonviolent conception of nature in his
letter of October 1665 to Henry Oldenburg: I do not think it right
for me to laugh at nature, much less to weep over it, when I consider
that men like the rest, are only part of nature, and that I do not know
how each part of nature is connected with the whole of it, and how
with the other parts.51 Rather than being the product of the state of
nature, violence is the offspring of a specific cultural formation that
shapes a social world in which war and social exclusion are accepted
as anthropological givens.
How does it come, then, that human society revolves around
violence and exclusivity? In his answer to this crucial question,
Spinoza focuses on the autoimmunity of teleology. The telos of a
specific group turns, over time, into the cause of its own destruc-
tion. Spinozas work on the relation between the passions of the
mind and the medical phenomenon of autoimmunity has a special
significance in the context of contemporary cultural and social
theory. Gilles Deleuze has drawn attention to Spinozas discussion of
autoimmunity in Part IV of the Ethics. Deleuzes analysis of Spinoza
and autoimmunity focuses on death:
Death is all the more necessary because it always comes from

without. To begin with, there is an average duration of existence:
given a relation, there is an average duration in which it can be
realized. But, further, accidents and external affections can interrupt
its realization at any moment. It is deaths necessity that makes
us believe that it is internal to ourselves. But in fact the destruc-
tion and decomposition do not concern either our relations in
themselves or our essence. They only concern our extensive parts
which belong to us for the time being, and then are determined to
enter into other relations than our own. This is why the Ethics, in
Part IV, attaches a good deal of importance to the apparent phe-
nomenon of self-destruction; in reality what is involved is always
a group of parts that are determined to enter into other relations
and consequently behave like foreign bodies inside us. This is what
occurs with the autoimmune diseases. A group of cells whose
relation is disturbed by an external agent, typically a virus, will be
destroyed by our characteristic (immune) system.52
Deleuze focuses on the way in which autoimmunity blurs the bound-

aries between self and other and between good (food) and bad (poi-
son): poison or food?with all the complications, since a poison can
be food for part of the thing considered.53 According to Deleuze,
Spinozas discussion of autoimmunity in Part IV of the Ethics thus
illustrates the blurring of the subjectobject distinction that char-
acterizes Deleuzes nonsupplementary plane of immanence, where
there is no longer a form, but only relations of velocity between
infinitesimal particles of unformed material, and where there is
no longer a subject, but only individuating affective states of an
anonymous force.54 Spinozas discussion of autoimmunity thus
questions the existence of autonomous individuals: hidden forces
within the self that destroy the self. Clearly this view undermines
the commonsense understanding of a distinctly delineated boundary
that separates the self from others.55
Spinoza reveals self-destruction as a wish for the destruction
of others. The medical boundaries between self and other are
fluid, as are the emotionalaffective boundaries. Spinoza illustrates
this in Part IV of the Ethics when he discusses the case of envy
and hate between Peter and Paul (Ethics IV, P34S). This discussion
illustrates how the affects (i.e., envy and hate) bring about a division
between self and other (i.e., between Peter and Paul) in the first
place. Without the quasi-autoimmune influence of the affects, Peters
self-preservation could be identical with that of Paul, and vice versa.
According to Spinoza, we are only opposed to each other when we
are torn by affectspassions. Spinoza foregrounds his discussion of
self-preservation via an analysis of autoimmunity and self-destruction
to bring to the fore the potential coincidence of the two elements.
In doing so, Spinoza wants to sensitize his readers to the deleterious
and truly irrational consequences of such coincidence. At this point,
self-preservation mutates into its opposite: into autoimmunity. Der-
rida has recently analyzed the political and ethical consequence of
self-preservation, which has become self-destruction.
As has been discussed in section 3, Derrida has defined an autoim-
munitary process as that strange behavior where a living being, in
quasi-suicidal fashion, itself works to destroy its own protection, to
immunize itself against its own immunity.56 Significantly, Derrida
put the terms itself and own into quotation marks, thus pointing to
the unstable character of this self that tries to preserve itself while
working against itself. In his reading, autoimmunity is not only a
medical but also a social, political, and economic process that is one-
dimensional and that, in its one-dimensionality, furthers precisely
that against which it sets out to work.
The linearity of teleological reason thus becomes explosive. In
this way, autoimmunitary movements ... produce, invent, and feed
the monstrosity they claim to overcome.57 Offering an alternative
to social practices that turn suicidal (i.e., autoimmune), Spinoza
shows how teleological conceptions of perfection contrast with
the perfected state of sustainability. Politicians as well as religious
leaders who attempt to set their society on the path toward the
establishment of some transcendent and thus nonembodied ide-
ational construct often do so with the concomitant aim of proving
the imperfections of neighboring states, depicting these in terms
of the devalued body and the merely material. By proclaiming
the purported superiority of their own society, they work, how-
ever, for its destruction. The insistence on the supremacy of ones
own telos does not only potentially justify the employment of
violent means for the attainment of this aim. It also provokes the
124 M I CHAEL M ACK
resentment, if not hate, of those over whom one seeks to triumph.

This becomes abundantly clear in Spinozas discussion of the
passions and, in contrast to them, the third kind of knowledge.
Crucially, in his account of the human affects that forms the heart
of the discussion of Part IV, Spinoza analyzes the minds abstraction
in terms of a given societys passion to triumph over another. Here
hierarchy emerges as the tyranny of universal ideas. The mind as
driven by passions for distinction and exclusivity constructs an ideal
of universality by means of which it passes judgment on natures
deficiency. Here the end justifies the employment of violent means.
Everything that deviates from the model of the universal constitutes
imperfection. The term sin describes this deviation. According to
Spinoza, the moralistic language of sinfulness gives rise to the hi-
erarchical dichotomy that values that which is perceived as perfect
and devalues that which appears as imperfect:
But after men began to form universal ideas, and devise models
[exemplaria excogitare] of houses, buildings, towers, and the like,
and to prefer some models of things to others, it came about that
each one called perfect what he saw agreed with the universal idea
he had formed of this kind of thing, and imperfect what he saw
agreed less with the model he had conceived [cum concepto], even
though its maker thought he had entirely finished it. Nor does
there seem to be any other reason why men also commonly call
perfect and imperfect natural things, which have not been made
by human hands. For they are accustomed to form universal ideas
of natural things as much as they do of artificial ones. They regard
these universal ideas as models of things, and believe that Nature
(which they think does nothing except for the sake of some end)
looks to them, and sets them before itself as models. So when
they see something happen in Nature which does not agree with
the model they have conceived of this kind of thing, they believe
[credunt] that Nature itself has failed or sinned, and left the thing
imperfect. (Ethics IV, Preface)
As in his critique of theology, in his analysis of teleological reason,

Spinoza focuses on the fictional fallacy to which an epistemology
that takes its ideational constructs as absolute invariably falls prey.
The preceding extract opens with human cognition and ends with
the uncertainty of belief systems. Societies as well as individuals
construct particular models (exemplari excogitari) that give shape to
their peculiar preferences and idiosyncratic inclinations. Here again,
Spinoza does not take issue with subjectivity as such. Instead, he
excoriates a cognitive fallacy that elevates an individual construct
into an absolute assessment of reality as it should be. The concep-
tual (concepto) turns out to be a matter of belief (credunt). Spinoza
detects a theological opposition between sin and immaculateness
behind the cognitive value judgment that contrasts perfection with
imperfection.
The preceding important extract shows how Spinoza analyzes
the ways in which theology and teleology meet. Teleological reason
in a crucial respect coincides with the anthropomorphic construc-
tion of God, which Spinoza critiqued at the opening of the Ethics.
Both teleology and Spinozas understanding of theology inflate the
sense of power with which any given society sees itself endowed.
According to teleological reason, a future goal sets those who sub-
scribe to it apart from the rest of the human community in terms of
moral and intellectual superiority. This sense of cognitive superiority
could then serve as justification for the use of unrivalled military
force that could in turn pave the way toward the attainment of a
redemptive future.
In a related manner, anthropomorphic conceptions of God
commingle the spiritual with the political. In this way, the God of a
specific community functions as a device that separates this group
from other groups in terms of superiority and inferiority. According
to Spinoza, theological conceptions thus serve to trump up rather
than to critically reflect on a sense of human omnipotence. The self
here merges with the deity it worships. Spinoza sees in this kind of
self-preservation turned wild the ultimate cause of different forms
of violent conflict. Bloodshed results from the self s touting of su-
periority. The self who revels in his or her own supremacy derives
joy from the inferiority of the other:
For whenever anyone imagines his own actions, he is affected with

joy (by P53), and with greater joy, the more his actions express
perfection, and the more distinctly he imagines them, that is (by
126 M I CHAEL M ACK
II40S1) the more he can distinguish them from others, and consider
them as singular things. So everyone will have the greatest gladness
from considering himself, when he considers something in himself
which he denies concerning others. (Ethics III, P55S)
True perfection, by contrast, does not separate between the self

and the other. This is exactly what Spinoza means by the intellectual
love of God, namely, the third kind of knowledge, which guarantees
the immortality of the soul:
This love toward God is the highest good which we can want
from the dictate of reason [Deum Amor summum bonum est, quod ex
dictamine rationis] (by IVP28), and is common to all men [omnibus
hominibus commune] (by IVP36); we desire that all should enjoy it
(by IV37). And so (by Def. Aff. XXIII), it cannot be stained by an
affect of envy, nor (by P18 and the Def. of jealousy, see IIIP35S) by
an affect of jealousy. On the contrary (by IIIP31), the more men
we imagine to enjoy it, the more it must be encouraged, q.e.d.
(Ethics V, P20Pr.)
Here Spinoza explains why the truly rational love of God represents
the highest good. The deum amor ex dictamine rationis (the love of
God out of the instruction obtained from rational inquiry) enables
social and political interactions that are free from violence precisely
because they are not accompanied by feelings of envy and jealousy,
which, as the previous discussion has shown, arise from touting te-
leological claims of superiority. The summum bonum thus coincides
with that which is common rather than exclusive to the diversity of
all peoples (omnibus hominibus commune est).
Communality as the Immortality of the Soul

As corollary of the discussion advanced in this chapter, it becomes
clear that it is exactly this communality that Spinoza understands
by the eternity of the mind. Critics have often asked why Spinoza
subscribed to the concept of the souls immortality while at the
same time affirming the parallelism between mind and body. How
can the soul be immortal if it is intrinsically tied to the decay of the
body? To deal with this mess, Aaron V. Garret has recently argued
that according to Spinoza, only a part of the mind is eternal.58 This
statement might reconcile the apparent contradiction of Spinozas
writing on the parallelism of body and mind, on one hand, and the
immortality of the soul, on the other.
Yet, at the same time, it gives rise to another paradox. How does
the separation of the mind into an inferior and thus perishable part
and into a superior and thus immortal essence square with Spinozas
focus on communality and interconnectedness (an element that
Garret otherwise emphasizes in his study)?59 Spinoza defines reason
as that aspect of the mind that proves capable of understanding the
necessary causes of various experiences the body undergoes in com-
munal life. It can thus only operate as part of a bodily entity. What
happens if the body to which the mind belongs has perished? As we
have seen, the mind, as the rational love of God, does its work in a
communal manner. There is not a single body that can rationally
claim reason as its exclusive possession; rather it forms part of the
whole of humanity in every aspect of its diversity.
The mind, as reason (rather than as affect), asks us to look out
for our self-interest. But the us in question here does not denote a
singular and exclusive group. On the contrary, it describes humanity
in its entirety. The minds eternal nature thus introduces a novel con-
ception of what it means to be a unity. As unified form, the eternity
of the mind at the same time constitutes a plurality. Once a particular
body perishes, the mind keeps on living in relation to the diversity
of other bodies that are still alive. As unity, it thus inhabits plurality.
Rather than being linear and one-dimensional, the mind as rational
love of God is ever changing. This continuity of change makes for
its eternity. We live in continuous change, Spinoza affirms (Ethics
V, P39S). Spinozas notion of the mind as a plural, sustainable, and
ever-changing unity could thus serve as a blueprint for an inclusive
universalism that would be truly beneficial for the nonviolent solv-
ing of problems that global societies are facing at the dawn of the
twenty-first century.
128 M I CHAEL M ACK
Notes
1 See Louis Althusser, The Only Materialist Tradition, Part I: Spi-
noza, trans. Ted Stolze, in The New Spinoza, ed. Warren Montag
and Ted Stolze (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997),
319; Etienne Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, trans. Peter Snowdown
(New York: Verso, 1998); Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy:
Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1992), and
Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988); Antonio Negri, The Savage
Anomaly: The Power of Spinozas Metaphysics and Politics, trans. Mi-
chael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), and
more recently, Negri, Subversive Spinoza: (Un)contemporary variations,
ed. Timothy S. Murphy, trans. T.S. Murphy, M. Hardt, T. Stolze,
and C.T. Wolfe (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press,
2004); Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence
of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
2 Michael Mack, German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism
of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003).
3 Cf. Don Garrett, Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Ratio-
nalism, in New Essays on the Rationalists, ed. Rocco J. Gennaro and
Charles Huenemann, 31035 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003).
4 Stephen B. Smith, Spinozas Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in
the Ethics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003).
5 Suzan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-century
Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 106.
6 John Cottingham provides the following nuanced account of
Descartess writings about the relationship between mind and
body: Descartes, though insisting that mind and body are distinct,
frequently stresses the unavoidable fact of their interaction: they
are so closely conjoined and intermingled as to from a unity, he
wrote in the Meditations (AT VII. 81; CSM II. 56); and in the cor-
respondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, he spoke of the
idea of the union of mind and body as one of the fundamental
notions on which all our other knowledge is patterned (AT III.
665; K 457). Spinoza acknowledges that man consists of a mind and
body, and that the human mind is united to the body (G II. 96; c.
457). But what he means by this union is very different from what
Descartes meant. In the preface to Part V of the Ethics he pours
scorn on the notion of any sort of interaction between mind and
brain, of the sort which Descartes envisaged in his account of the
role of the pineal gland; Cottingham, The Rationalists (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990), 131.
7 Cottingham, Rationalists, 132.
8 Steven Nadler, Spinozas Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2006), 135.
9 Ibid., 199.
10 In this way, Spinozas Ethics seems to anticipate the austerity of
Kants categorical imperative: Like Kants categorical (moral)
imperative, the dictates of reason transcend personal differences
and make universal demands on human behaviour. Ibid., 227.
11 Smith, Spinozas Book of Life, 52.
12 Ibid., 80.
13 In the preface, Smith makes clear that this is the agenda of his in-
quiry: I am not interested in the Ethics because it helps to confirm
contemporary opinions and points of view, but because it challenges
them. Ibid., xii.
14 Antonio Damasio, Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human
Brain (New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994), and Damasio, Looking for
Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (London: Harcourt, 2003).
15 Darkly, through the glass of his unsentimental and unvarnished
sentences, Spinoza apparently had gleaned an architecture of life
regulation along the lines that William James, Claude Bernard,
and Sigmund Freud would pursue two centuries later. Moreover,
by refusing to recognize a purposeful design in nature, and by con-
ceiving of bodies and minds as made up of components that could
be combined in varied patterns across different species, Spinoza
was compatible with Charles Darwins evolutionary thinking.
Ibid., 13.
16 Ibid., 171.
17 For an analysis of racism in terms of defense mechanisms, see Mi-
chael P. Levine, Philosophy and Racism, in Racism in the Mind, ed.
M.P. Levine and T. Pataki, 7896 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 2004).
130 M I CHAEL M ACK
18 Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, trans. Chaya Naor (Phila-

delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 714.
19 Ren Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philoso-
phy, ed. David Weissman, with essays by William T. Bluhm, Lou
Massa, Thomas Pavel, John F. Post, and Stephen Toulmin (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 19.
20 Jean-Luc Marion, Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 91.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 95
23 Ibid.
24 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 50.
25 Jonathan Israel as well as Steven Nadler rightly emphasize Spinozas
democratic outlook. Nadler argues that Spinozas support of de-
mocracy is one of the reasons why he originally set out to ensure
that a Dutch translation of the Ethics was available: Despite the
difficulties of the book [i.e., the Ethics], Spinoza clearly believed
that anyoneand we are all endowed with the same cognitive
facultieswith sufficient self-mastery and intellectual attentiveness
can perceive the truth to the highest degree. This is probably the
reason why he seems from the start to have wanted to make sure
that a Dutch translation of the Ethics was available, so that the
truth would be accessible for many. For it is our natural eudaimo-
nia, our happiness or well-being, that is at stake, and for Spinoza
this consists in the knowledge embodied in the propositions of
the Ethics. Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 22627.
26 The English edition of the Ethics used here is Spinoza, Ethics, ed.
and trans. Edwin Curley, with an introduction by Stuart Hampshire
(London: Penguin, 1996). I have also consulted the original Latin in
Spinoza, Opera, vol. 2, ed. Carl Gebhardt (Heidelberg, Germany:
Carl Winter, 1925).
27 As Philip Goodchild has recently argued, this sense of human
limitation is rational: For to be rational today is to pay attention
to the universal limits of human experience. The truth of common
experience is the ecological limit, the suffering of the planet. The
truth of the cause of this suffering is the socio-economic limit, the
capture of piety by uncontrolled global free-market capitalism.
Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety (London:

Routledge, 2002), 252.
28 For a detailed discussion of this topic, see Michael Mack, Anthropology
as Memory: Elias Canettis and Franz Baermann Steiners Responses to
the Shoah (Tbingen, Germany: Niemeyer, 2001).
29 Elias Canetti, Gesprch mit Theodor W. Adorno, in Aufstze,
Reden, Gesprche (Munich, Germany: Hanser, 2005), 141.
30 Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with
Jrgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003), 94.
31 Cf. Michael Mack, The Metaphysics of Eating: Jewish Dietary Law
and Hegels Social Theory, Philosophy and Social Criticism 27, no. 5
(2001): 5988.
32 Balibar thus points out that the concept which is used here to dif-
ferentiate between the individuals singularity and the singularity
of a historically constituted group is the same as that which was
earlier used to express the essence of the individuals singularity
(ingenium). Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, 37.
33 Jerome B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of
Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 221.
34 This Spinozan understanding of virtue as not opposed to but as
emerging from nature has special significance with respect to the
globalization conflict within the twenty-first century. The ideology
of morality that governs the discourse of Islamic fundamentalism
performs the violent imposition of the good and thus Godly onto
the perceived depravity of the Wests naturelike materialism.
35 As Leo Strauss convincingly argues, Hobbess political philosophy
presupposes dualism: The idea of civilization presupposes that
man, by virtue of his intelligence, can place himself outside nature,
can rebel against nature. This dualism is transparent all the way
through Hobbes philosophy, not least in the antithesis of status
naturalis and status civilis. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes:
Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1952), 168.
36 Ibid., 23.
37 Whereas Spinoza, who is in this respect fully in line with the Aver-
roist tradition, indeed takes the trend of this tradition to the ultimate
conclusion, could not but recognize religion as an essential means

for the maintenance of the state, in Hobbes theory of the sate
there is no point of union which could serve for a similar defense
of religion. Leo Strauss, Spinozas Critique of Religion, trans. E.M.
Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 101.
38 Ibid.
39 Schneewind, Invention of Autonomy, 222.
40 Blumenberg argues that the nominalism of late Scholasticism
distances itself from a biblical understanding of God. It subscribes
to Aristotles understanding of an unmoved mover, whereas the
Bible depicts God as always being engaged with humanity. Accord-
ing to Blumenberg, Descartes turns this view of a transcendent
absolute into the sphere of immanence. The cogito ergo sum thus
instantiates the emergence of the human as the immanent unmoved
mover. Against this background, Blumenberg accounts for the
two-faced character of the Enlightenment. It is at once teleological
(thus clinging to a great design theory that inhabits a certain theo-
logical sphere) and atheistic: The provocation of the transcendent
absolute at the point of its extreme radicalization transmutes into
the discovery of the immanent absolute.... The Janus face of the
Enlightenmentits renewal of a teleological optimism, on the one
hand, and its atheistic inclination, on the otherloses its contradic-
toriness, if one understands it as the unity of the attempt at both
human self-affirmation and the rejection of its role in the system
of the late Middle Ages. Hans Blumenberg, Skularisierung und
Selbstbehauptung (Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1974), 20911;
my translation.
41 Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1995), 33.
42 Cf. Warren Montag, Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contem-
poraries (New York: Verson, 1999), and Moira Gatens and Genevieve
Lloyd, Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present (New York:
Routledge, 1999).
43 For a detailed discussion of this point, see Mack, Anthropology as
Memory, 2529.
44 In the Preface of Book V of the Ethics, Spinoza emphasizes this
philosophical trajectory that connects Descartes with the Stoics
as follows: Here, then, as I have said, I shall treat only of the
power of the mind, or of reason, and shall show, above all, how
great its dominion over the affects is and what kind of dominion
it has for restraining and moderating them: For we have already
demonstrated above that it does not have an absolute dominion
over them: Nevertheless, the Stoics thought that they depend en-
tirely on our will, and that we can command them absolutely: But
experience cries out against this, and has forced them, in spite of
their principles, to confess that much practice and application are
required to restrain and moderate them.... Descartes was rather
inclined to this opinion.
45 As Damasio has shown, the identification of the brain with the
mind in direct opposition to the merely bodily has until recently
been the accepted creed as regards the perception of human in-
telligence: And so, perhaps for most scientists working on mind
and brain, the fact that the mind depends closely on the workings
of the brain is no longer in question.... Uncovering a causative
nexus from brain to mind, and a dependence of mind on brain, is
good news, of course, but we should recognize that we have not
yet elucidated the mindbody problem satisfactorily, and that the
enterprise faces several hurdles, large and small. At least one of
those hurdles could be overcome with a simple change of perspec-
tive. The hurdle relates to a curious situation: While the modern
scientific coupling of brain and mind is most welcome, it does not
do away with the dualistic split between mind and body. It simply
shifts the position of the split. In the most popular and current of
the modern views, the mind and the brain go together, on one side,
and the body (that is, the entire organism minus the brain) goes on
the other side. Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 190.
47 Spinoza, The Correspondence of Spinoza, trans. and ed. with intro-
duction and annotations by A. Wolf (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1928), 147.
48 This is why Deleuze, with his Nietzschean opposition between good
and bad, might partially reinstate the hierarchical structure that
Spinoza critiqued in his analysis of the dichotomy between good
and evil. In Deleuzes account of Spinoza, evil seems to reemerge
with the abstract and universal concept of badness: All evil comes
down to badness, and everything that is bad belongs to the category
that includes poison, indigestion, intoxication. Deleuze, Spinoza:

Practical Philosophy, 72.
49 As Nadler has pointed out, Spinoza studied Hobbes political
writings, especially the Dutch (1667) or Latin (1668) translation of
Leviathan in the early 1670s. Nadler, Spinozas Ethics, 244.
50 Nadler has argued that like Hobbess state of nature, Spinozas pre-
political condition is one of unrestrained pursuit of self-interest.
Ibid., 245. It is with such an interpretation of Spinozas notion of
nature that the current chapter takes issue.
51 Spinoza, Correspondence of Spinoza, 205.
53 Ibid., 126.
54 Ibid., 128.
55 As Philip Goodchild has pointed out, this is why Deleuze attrib-
uted to Spinoza the discovery of an unconscious of thought: there
is always a thought that acts or thinks, but does not know itself.
Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion, 157.
56 Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 94.
57 Ibid., 99.
58 Aaron V. Garret, Meaning in Spinozas Method (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2003), 195.
59 Thus Garret defines interconnectedness as the hallmark of Spinozas
philosophical approach: That this is the case, i.e. that apparently
unrelated concepts are interconnected in often surprising ways is
itself one of the hallmarks of Spinozas method. Ibid., 18.
6
Prophecy without Prophets:
Spinoza and Maimonides on
Law and the Democracy
of Knowledge
arthur j. jacobson
at two different points in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spi-

noza takes what appear to be contrary positions on the status of the
propagators of natural knowledge. He asks whether they might
fairly be called prophets. In chapter 1, Of Prophecy, Spinoza takes
care to deny that they are prophets, though the knowledge they
propagate surely is prophecy, according to Spinozas definition of
prophecy at the beginning of the chapter. In chapter 7, Of the In-
terpretation of Scripture, he takes a position apparently unrelated to
the propagators of natural knowledge that forces us, by implication,
to consider whether they may be prophets of a kind after all. This
essay explores the tension between these positions and a comparable
tension in Maimonidess writings on the laws of prophecy.
In chapter 1 of the Tractatus, Spinoza denies that the propagators
of natural knowledge are prophets.1 He has just finished arguing that
natural knowledge itself can indeed be called prophecy, according to
the definition of prophecy as the certain knowledge of some thing
revealed by God to a human being.2 From this definition, it follows,
he says, that natural knowledge can be called prophecy. For that
which we know by natural light depends solely on the knowledge
of God and his eternal decrees... . The nature of God, insofar as
we participate in it, and Gods decrees dictate, as it were, [natural
135
136 ARTHUR J. JACOBSON
knowledge] to us.3 In the same way, God, according to rabbinic

tradition, dictated the Five Books to Moses. The revelation of natural
knowledge, Spinoza believes, is no different. Furthermore, natural
knowledge is certain; we can know whether we know. For the idea
of God (in the manner I have indicated) and nature dictates to us all
that we clearly and distinctly understand, certainly not in words but
in a far more excellent manner, one that agrees exceedingly well with
the nature of mind, as everyone who has tasted intellectual certainty
has doubtless experienced on his own. The only difference between
natural knowledge and other sorts of prophecy is the means by which
it is conveyed, through natural light rather than in a vision or by
direct, face-to-face communication with God.
But this one difference, the means of conveyance, defies our usual
ideas about prophets. Because God conveys natural knowledge to
us through natural light, and because natural light is common to
all human beings,4 then natural knowledge, unlike any other sort
of prophecy, must be common to all human beings as well. Here
Spinoza must confront the question, given that natural knowledge
is divine and its communication to human beings prophecy, must
we consider every human being a prophet?
Yet Spinoza immediately draws back from the question, seeming
to deny his assertion that natural knowledge is common to all human
beings. Instead of asking whether all human beings are prophets
the question he must be asking if natural knowledge is indeed to be
common to allhe asks whether the propagators of natural knowledge
are prophets.5 By posing this question narrowly, and by not asking
the more general question that the argument requires, Spinoza im-
plicitly denies that all human beings receive natural knowledge as
a direct communication from God. Only some do: only those who
propagate (or are capable of propagating) natural knowledge. The
others, who do not (and cannot) propagate, must not be able to receive
natural knowledge directly, as a divine communication. Otherwise,
if they could receive natural knowledge directly, they either would
or could also propagate that knowledge and thus be included in the
class of propagators. And if no one were in the class of those who
lack direct access to natural knowledge, then none could be in the
class of propagators: no one could propagate because propagation
entails the dissemination of knowledge by those who have it to those
PROPHECY WITHOUT PROPHETS 137
who dontit assumes the simultaneous existence of both those

who lack direct access and those who have it.
But Spinozas implicit division of all humanity into two classes
this waythose who receive natural knowledge directly from God
and those who dontposes a question in answer to which Spinoza
stakes out a clear and unequivocal position: are those who cant
receive natural knowledge directly from God able to know whether
the knowledge that the propagators communicate to them is indeed
natural knowledge, or whether it is knowledge of another sort, or
whether it is even knowledge? For these indirect recipients of natural
knowledge have no direct access to God, no certain template against
which to measure the verity and accuracy of the propagators knowl-
edge. Even worse, they have no way of telling who is an authentic
propagator, someone genuinely receiving direct communications
from God, and who is notone who either deceives himself into
thinking that he is an authentic propagator or deceives others into
thinking that he is, knowing full well that he is not.
Spinozas answer to this question is that the rest of humanity
the recipients of natural knowledge indirectly through propagators
rather than directly from Godare able to perceive and consider
what [the propagators] teach with a certainty and dignity equal to
theirs, and this not only through faith.6 That is to say, they are able
to tell whether the knowledge they receive at second hand is or is not
genuine natural knowledge, despite the fact that the knowledge they
receive from propagators is in words and images, unlike the form
in which the propagators receive knowledge, as divine intuition.7
Moreover, the rest of humanity has this ability as against propagators,
even though they do not have it as against God. In other words, they
are able to tell what is and what is not genuine natural knowledge
when propagators present it to them in the form of a reportin
words and imagesbut they are unable to form an intuition of the
knowledge apart from the report. They have the intuition against
which to judge the verity and accuracy of a propagators report,
but not otherwise. They are handicapped in their access to natural
knowledge but not in their certainty about its truth.
Whether this portrait of the variable relationship of human be-
ings to natural knowledge is either attractive or accurate, it does, in
Spinozas view, settle the question whether the propagators of natural
138 A RTHUR J. JACOBSON
knowledge can be considered prophets. They cannot.8 For Spinoza,

direct access to divine intuition does not mark one off from the rest
of humanity as a prophet. The rest of humanity can perceive and
consider what they teach with a certainty and dignity equal to theirs,
and this not only through faith. Only if the rest of humanity could
not perceive and consider the teachings of propagators, only if the
relationship between the rest of humanity and the propagators were
a relationship of faith, would it be proper to call the propagators
prophets. Prophecy requires faith; natural knowledge does not.
Then later, in chapter 7, Spinoza criticizes Maimonidess view
on the proper method of scriptural interpretation and defends his
own view against it. Spinozas view, which I shall not elaborate, is
that the method of interpreting Scripture is no different from the
method of interpreting nature.9 The interpreter must treat the text
as a mass of data, just as the scientist looks at nature. The interpreter
understands a text, just as the scientist understands laws that make
sense of data. The text creates its own laws, its own peculiar nature,
and these laws need have nothing whatsoever to do with the laws
of nature, the laws of reason, or the laws of any other text or any
possible world. The text may be understood, nonetheless, just the
way one understands naturelooking at the text as it is, taking the
text on its own terms, grasping the laws the text lays down just as
one would grasp the laws that the orbits of the planets lay down,
or the growth of a plant, or the combustion of a wick exposed to
fire. It is the natural light and no other that illuminates these laws
of the text, just as it illuminates the laws of physics, or biology, or
chemistry.10
Against his own method, Spinoza arrays a host of difficulties that
he acknowledges to be genuine. He then presents and criticizes oppos-
ing views. Chief among these is Maimonidess view, which subjects
every passage of scripture to the test of reason: For he thought every
passage of Scripture to admit variousindeed contrarysenses,
and us not to be certain about the truth of any, unless we know that
passage, exactly as it is interpreted, to contain nothing which does
not agree with reason or is incompatible with it.11 Subjecting the
text to the laws of reason, however, prevents one from using natu-
ral light to understand the text. For a text not designed specifically
according to the laws of reason but according to a different set of

laws does not and cannot yield to the laws of reason on their own
terms. A light other than the natural light (alio praeter lumen natu-
rale12) would have to be the route to understanding.
But then, the signal quality of the natural light, that it is common
to all human beings, would be lost. No other light has that quality.
Every other light is artificial, not natural. The reasoning appropriate
to every other light is artificial reason. Its proofs are artificial proofs
according to artificial criteria of truth. It requires demonstrations
(demonstrationes) rather than immediate intuitions. Every other light
must be cultivated and transmitted in a costly program of research
and education. Basing interpretation on a light other than the natural
light, therefore, has the following consequence:
If this opinion were true [that the passages of scripture must agree
with reason], then, it would follow that the vulgar, who are for
the most part ignorant of demonstrations, or lack the leisure for
them, would be able to accept nothing concerning Scripture but
from the sole authority and testimony of the philosophers, and
consequently will have to assume that philosophers are unable to
err in their interpretations of Scripture, which certainly would be
novel authority for a church and an extraordinary class of priests or
pontiffs, which the vulgar would rather ridicule than venerate.13
Spinozas method, at least in principle, requires none of this:
And although our method requires knowledge of the Hebrew

language, for the study of which the vulgar are likewise unable
to be free, yet they can make no similar objection to us. For the
vulgar of the Jews and Gentiles, for whom the prophets and
Apostles once preached and wrote, understood the language of
the prophets and Apostles, from which they actually perceived the
mind of the prophets, but not the justifications of the things they
preach, which according to the opinion of Maimonides they ought
to understand as well. From the justification of our method it does
not necessarily follow that the vulgar submit to the testimony of
interpreters. For I display a people [vulgus] that is skilled in the
140 A RTHUR J. JACOBSO N
language of the prophets and Apostles, but Maimonides displays

no people that understands the reasons of things.14
The importance of this last passage is structural. Its structure is the

same as the structure of Spinozas argument in chapter 1 about the
propagators of natural knowledge. The vulgar today cannot in fact
understand the language of the prophets and the Apostles because
the prophets and Apostles spoke Hebrew,15 which is not the language
today. The only people today who can understand the language of
the prophets and Apostles are the few who have adequate leisure and
incentive to master Hebrew. So, in fact, the vulgar today must rely
on interpreters to learn the message of the prophets and Apostles. In
fact, they are as if Maimonidess opinion concerning the interpreta-
tion of scripture were true: they would be able to accept nothing
concerning Scripture but from the sole authority and testimony of
an intermediary between them and the text. Whether the interme-
diary is a philosopher or a translator makes no difference. In both
cases, the intermediary claims an expertiseone in philosophy, the
other in translationthat opens the door to a meaning inacces-
sible without that expertise. Nevertheless, there is this difference:
the vulgar cannot ridicule the authority of a translator in the same
way they can ridicule the authority of a philosopher. The translator
is not open to the objection that confounds the philosopher, that
neither prophets nor Apostles could possibly have been speaking
philosophically because they were speaking to the vulgar, and the
vulgar in their day would have understood philosophy no better
than the vulgar in ours. Because the message of the prophets and
Apostles was once accessible to the vulgar, it must in principle be
accessible to them todaythey would understand the message if
they knew the language in which it was written. But the message
is not accessible because they dont. That is the structure presented
by Spinozas description of the relationship between biblical text
and the vulgar. The vulgar must, in principle, be able to understand
biblical text, but in fact, they cannot. A translator must mediate their
relationship to the text.
Putting aside once again the merits of Spinozas argument, notice
instead the similarity of this structureunderstand in principle, re-
quire mediators in factto the structure Spinoza sets up in chapter 1.
There the rest of humanitythose to whom the propagators of

natural knowledge propagatehave complete access to natural
knowledge in principle. In fact, they do not. With respect to at least
some part of natural knowledge, they are forced to rely on the
report of propagators, who do have complete access. The propaga-
tors of natural knowledge have an expertise, just like Maimonidess
philosophers or Spinozas translators. The beneficiaries of that
expertise, like all beneficiaries of all expertise, are forced to submit
to the propagators authority and testimony.
In Spinozas account at least, the sole difference between the
propagators and the philosophers and translators is that Spinoza
assumes that those with an incomplete knowledge of God are able
to distinguish a false from a true report as adequately as if they had
a complete knowledge of God. The reader of a translation who does
not know the language from which the text has been translated, in
contrast, cannot tell whether the translation is faithful or faithless.
Translators themselves could not necessarily agree what a faithful
translation would be in the first place. The same holds true for the
work product of the philosopher. How could the philosophically il-
literate know whether a philosophers interpretation of a passage in
the Bible is philosophically sound? Would philosophers ever agree,
after all, on what philosophical soundness entails?
In the end, the difference is an illusory one. Given enough time
and motivation, the reader of a translation could master the originals
language and then be in a position to judge, or at least have an opin-
ion about, the adequacy of a translation. A philosophical illiterate,
assuming enough raw intelligence, could become adept in the ways
of philosophy and be able to assess the adequacy of a philosophers
interpretation. The disability for both is a disability of circumstance
only. It is not a profound disability. Nothing stops either from getting
up to speed. The matter stands quite differently for the propagators
audience, those without complete access to natural knowledge.
Their disability is hard-wired into their natures: The nature of God,
insofar as we participate in it, and Gods decrees dictate, as it were,
[natural knowledge] to us.16 Their disability is one of Gods laws.
Like certain students of philosophy, they cannot, even in principle,
get up to speed. What rescues them from utter dependence on the
propagators is Spinozas assumption that they are able to perceive
and consider what [the propagators] teach with a certainty and dignity
equal to theirs, and this not only through faith.17 Avoiding mastery
and subjection depends on this assumption alone.
Spinozas attack on Maimonidess doctrine of interpretation is
thematic for the entire Tractatus. The argument of the Tractatus is a
rejection of Maimonidess insistence on reconciling scripture with
the best opinions in science. It is this insistencethat a text whose
pitch and pith are ethical also establishes the foundations of philoso-
phy and the sources of sciencethat causes all the trouble. It is this
insistence that leads governments to tell philosophers what to think
and philosophers to shrink from the truths of science. It did not
ameliorate Maimonidess error, in Spinozas view, that his intentions
toward philosophy were as benevolent as his own. Maimonides was
setting up his stand in the wrong market, and in the end, his efforts
to reconcile scripture with philosophy could cause only mischief
to both. Spinozas project, therefore, was to defeat Maimonidess
endeavor in all its manifold variations, whether benevolent or not,
by forever (he vainly hoped) severing the connection between scrip-
ture and science. The greater the wonder, then, that the ambivalent
structure of Spinozas thinking about prophecy had its originor if
not its origin, then its originalin Maimonidess own writings.
In the first part of his Mishneh Torah (Repetition of Torah)
Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah (Laws That Are Foundations of the Torah)
Maimonides describes the laws of prophecy (in chapter 7). (His Guide
of the Perplexed describes the philosophy of prophecy.)18 Commenting
on the first law (halachah),19 Maimonides reviews the physical and
spiritual preconditions for prophecy. One who would be a prophet
must, first of all, be a very wise sage. He must have a strong character,
in the sense that he is never overcome by natural inclinations.20 He
must be physically sound. He must have a broad and correct per-
spective to understand the great and sublime concepts of spiritual
knowledge. If so, he will become holy. He will advance and separate
himself from the masses who proceed in the darkness of the time.
He must train himself not to have thoughts about fruitless things
or the vanities and intrigues of the times.
Instead, his mind should constantly be directed upward, bound

beneath [Gods] throne [of Glory, striving] to comprehend the
holy and pure forms and gazing at the wisdom of the Holy One,
blessed be He, in its entirety, [in its manifold manifestations] from
the most elevated [spiritual] form until the navel of the earth, ap-
preciating His greatness from them. [After these preparations,]
the spirit of prophecy will immediately rest upon him.21
Commentary to the first halachah closes with an explanation of spirit

of prophecy. When the spirit of prophecy rests on someone, his
soul becomes intermingled with the lowest order of angels, the
ishim. He will be transformed into a different person, understanding
with a knowledge different from what it was previously. He is already
above the level of the other wise men22 and separate ... from the
masses,23 even before he has uttered a single prophecy.
For he is not yet a prophet, even though the spirit of prophecy
rests on his soul. He is only a disciple of the prophets, one who
aspires to prophecy, a candidate prophet. Once the spirit of prophecy
rests on them, disciples must in addition concentrate their attention
if they wish to prophesy. They must seclude themselves, [waiting]
in a happy, joyous mood, because prophecy cannot rest upon a
person when he is sad or languid, but only when he is happy. Thus,
the prophets disciples would always have a harp, drum, flute, and
lyre [before them when] they were seeking prophecy.24 Even then,
prophecy is not guaranteed: Even though [the disciples] concentrate
their attention, it is possible that the Divine Presence will rest upon
them, and it is possible that it will not rest upon them.25
This was not the case for only one prophet. Moses could elect
when to prophesy, without preparation:
Whenever he desired, the holy spirit would envelop him, and

prophecy would rest upon him. He did not have to concentrate his
attention to prepare himself [for prophecy], because his [mind] was
always concentrated, prepared, and ready [to appreciate spiritual
truth] as the angels [are].26
Mosess prophecy differs from that of all the other prophets in other
ways. Other prophets received prophetic insight in the form of a
dream or a vision. Moses prophesied while standing awake. The
others prophesied through the medium of an angel. Moses spoke
with God mouth to mouth.27 The others received prophecy in the

form of an allegory or metaphor, together with the meaning. For
Moses, says Maimonides, there was no metaphor. Rather, he would
perceive the matter in its fullness, without metaphor or allegory.28
The other prophets were terrified as they prophesied. God spoke to
Moses as a man speaks to a friend. Moses mental power was suf-
ficient to comprehend the words of prophecy while he was standing
in a composed state.29 The other prophets experienced prophecy
as something of a nightmare: When any of them prophesy, their
limbs tremble, their physical powers become weak, they lose control
of their senses, and thus, their minds are free to comprehend what
they see.30 In contrast, Mosess permanent seclusion allowed him
to be permanently in a heightened state of consciousness, ready for
prophecy; he never returned to his tent: he separated himself
from women and everything of that nature forever. He bound his
mind to the Eternal Rock. [Accordingly,] the glory never left him
forever. The flesh of his countenance shone, [for] he became holy
like the angels.31
Maimonides thus sets up a contrast reminiscent of Spinozas in
the Tractatus: on one hand, Moses, who has unlimited, certain access
to divine communication, on the other, the disciples of the prophets,
whose access to divine communication is limited and uncertain. The
contrast Spinoza sets up is between two groups, both of which have
unlimited access to natural knowledge in principle, but only one
of which has it in fact. Can the same be said of the disciples of the
prophets: that they have unlimited access in principle, even though
Maimonides makes it clear that they do not have it in practice? Does,
in other words, possession of the spirit of prophecy qualify the dis-
ciples of the prophets as having unlimited access in principle?
Maimonides begins to answer this question in Halachah 7, at
the very end of chapter 7. In Halachah 7, he describes the uses
of prophecy. A prophet may experience prophecy, he says, just to
broaden his own perspective and increase his own knowledge. Or
he may be sent to a community to tell them what they should do
or to stop them from doing evil. In the latter case, where prophecy
performs its political rather than its intellectual function, the prophet
is always given a sign or wonder [to perform], so that the people
will know that God has truly sent him.32 But fitness for prophecy
great wisdom, a strong character, a broad and correct perspective,

physical soundnessall these must be present beforehand. If they
are not, the person who performs the signs or wonders should not
be accepted as a prophet. If, on the other hand, they are present in
someone who follows the paths of prophecy in holiness, separat-
ing himself from worldly matters, and afterwards performs a sign
or wonder and states that he was sent by God, it is a mitzvah to
listen to him.33 (A mitzvah is a Torah obligation, or alternatively,
a good deed.)
However, even if a person is fit for prophecy, even if he performs
signs or wonders, he still may not be a true prophet. It is possible
that a person will perform a sign or wonder even though he is not
a prophetrather, the wonder will have [another cause] behind it.
It is, nevertheless, a mitzvah to listen to him. Since he is a wise man
of stature and fit for prophecy, we accept [his prophecy as true].34
Notice that Maimonides switches here from speaking about signs or
wonders, as if it is all the same whether one is dealing with a sign or
with a wonder, to speaking about wonders alone. It is only wonders
that he describes as potentially having a cause other than true proph-
ecy. (Only in Halachah 1, chapter 8, do we learn just exactly what
this other cause may be, and that is magic or sorcery.35) Maimonides
doesnt say the same about signs. The question that Maimonidess
extraordinary switch from signs and wonders to wonders alone begs
the reader to ask is whether confinement of the possibility of non-
prophetic causation to wonders is significant, that is to say, whether
signs are necessarily perfect indicia of prophetic causation and do
not suffer from the same defect in trustworthiness as wonders. That
question is sufficiently important to justify interrupting the exposi-
tion of Halachah 7, chapter 7, with an answer.
What does Maimonides mean by sign? What does he mean by
wonder? We have to read all the way to chapter 10 to find out. There
Maimonides suggests, albeit indirectly, that a wonder is an alteration
in the natural order (literally, customary world; the examples
he givesElijah and Elisha reviving the dead and so forthmake it
clear that he means wonder to be a synonym for miracle, so altera-
tion in the natural order is a suitable translation).36 But then he
suggests a meaning for sign entirely unexpected from the perspective
of the discussion in Halachah 7, chapter 7. When a prophet tells us
that God has sent him, says Maimonides, he does not have to prove
himself by performing wonders like those of Elijah or Elisha, which
altered the natural order:
Rather, the sign of [the truth of his prophecy] will be the fulfill-
ment of his prediction of future events.... Therefore, if a person
whose [progress] in the service of God makes him fit for prophecy
arises [and claims to be a prophet]if he does not intend to add
[to] or diminish [the Torah], but rather to serve God through
the mitzvoth of the Torahwe do not tell him: Split the sea for
us, revive the dead, or the like, and then we will believe in you.
Instead, we tell him, If you are a prophet, tell us what will hap-
pen in the future. He makes his statements, and we wait to see
whether [his prophecy] comes to fruition or not.37
If his prophecy does not come true, then he is a false prophet and
subject to the death penalty. (A salubrious rule, on the whole. We
would do well to apply it to our pundits.) Maimonides tells us to
test the prophet many times. But if all his statements prove true,
he should be considered a true prophet.38 A prophet who qualifies
this way, by predicting the future, is limited to just one purpose in
prophesyingpredicting the futureand the future may be a po-
litical future or a personal future; it doesnt matter which.39 So the
sign coincides with the prophecy: the prophets ability to predict the
future is a sign of his ability to predict the future. A prophet who
qualifies in other ways is apparently not so limited.
It is apparent from Maimonidess text that he does not regard
predicting the future as the only sort of sign. In Halachah 2, chapter
8, he describes Moses as knowing that one who believes in a prophet
because of signs has apprehension in his heart, and that he has
doubts and suspicions.40 (In Halachah 1, chapter 8, Maimonides had
already described wonders that way.) The sign could be the result
of magic or sorcery, not prophecy. 41 Moses therefore asked God to
release him from his missiontaking the Israelite slaves out of Egypt.
God answers that the wonders Moses was able to pull off in Egypt
were only a temporary expedient. (Note that Moses had complained
about doubtful signs, not wonders.) Once out, the people would
stand on the mountain and all doubts would be removed: Here, I
will give you a sign, Maimonides quotes God as telling Moses, so

that they will know that I truly sent you from the outset, and thus, no
doubts will remain in their hearts.42 Thus Maimonides takes care to
describe the event that will remove all doubt from the peopletheir
witnessing God speaking to Moses at the foot of Mount Sinaias
a sign, not as a wonder.
Furthermore, it is important to compare the two sorts of signs
described by Maimonides. The sign in Halachah 3, chapter 10,
involves action by candidate prophets: predicting the future. If a
candidate predicts the future accurately, that is a sign that he is a
prophet. This sign has two prominent characteristics. First, theres
no uncertainty about the sign: the candidate predicts the future, and
hes either right or wrong. Second, the prediction concerns events
in this world: people doing this or that, storms coming up, objects
in certain places, and so on. All the events involved in predicting
the future can be described in a natural way; they are movements
within nature. Thus the prophetic predictions are predictions about
nature. They show a heightened level of consciousness about na-
ture, whether physical nature, animal nature, or human nature.
Prediction is always premised on nature. Thats what nature means:
predictable. In contrast, the sign that God gives Moses in Halachah
2, chapter 8, involves Gods action: speaking to Moses in front of the
assembled throng. It is not an action of the prophet. It is the natural
manifestation of a supernatural agent, the people experiencing God
as a voice that could be heard. Thus, with Moses, they were able to
bear witness to a natural event, whose cause, however, could not be
attributed to any natural agent but only to a divine agent. In both
instances, the sign was part of nature and therefore certain. In the
case of the ordinary prophet, certainty means the coming into being
of the future; in the case of Moses, it means the coming into being
of Gods agency.
Unlike wonders, therefore, signs impart certainty, precisely be-
cause they follow rather than usurp the ordinary course of nature.43
Signs are also obvious. They proclaim that for which they are signs.
Wonders, in contrast, do not. Thus predicting the future is a sign of
success for predicting the future. Talking with God is a sign of talking
with God. Signs are the course of nature. Wonders are a departure
from it. Wonders and signs thus describe two different routes to
prophecy: one a disruption of the natural order, the other an exten-

sion of it, either into the future or into the realm of the divine.
We may now return to the exposition of Halachah 7, chapter 7.
After describing the uses of prophecy, the qualifications of prophets,
and the inherent uncertainty of prophecy qualified by wonders,
Maimonides argues for accepting as true the statements of a wise
man of stature and fit for prophecy who has performed a sign or
wonder, even though he may not, in fact, be a prophet. One question
we shall have to face is whether each of the arguments applies to
both signs and wonders or to wonders alone because Maimonides
qualifies the general reference to signs and wonders by saying that
wonders may have a cause other than prophecy, without saying the
same about signs.
The first argument suggests a legal analogy (we do it there, so
we can do it here too: this is not a practice unknown in other parts
of the legal system). The Torah commands rendition of a legal
judgment based on the testimony of two witnesses. Both may, in
fact, be testifying falsely. But if the witnesses are acceptable, then
the law presumes that they are telling the truth.44 Each one serves
as a witness to his colleague that he is telling the truth.45 In other
words, we know that in a certain number of cases, both witnesses
will be lying or may be mistaken. Thats just the way things are. But
theres nothing the law can do about it, so long as both witnesses
are prepared to lie or are mistaken and so long as both are qualified
witnesses. The legal system winds up treating false statements as if
they were true because it has no way of knowing which statements
are false. Thats why it insists on two witnesses at a minimum: its
unlikely (although certainly possible) that two people would be
prepared to lie in court or would tell unwitting falsehoods.
The two-witness analogy applies to at least one sort of sign be-
cause Maimonides himself applies it to that sign at the beginning of
Halachah 2, chapter 8: both Moses and the entire people of Israel,
he says, were witness to Mosess appointment as a prophet at Mount
Sinai.46 Had we the report of Moses alone, it would be untrustworthy:
he could be lying or mistaken. Had we the report of the people alone,
it would be equally untrustworthy. Moses himself must experience
God as appointing him; he must have the awareness that he has
been made a prophet and that he is acting as a prophet. If Moses
lacks confidence in his own mission, if he slights or ignores his own

prophetic vision, he will either not communicate the prophecies to
the people or dissuade them from believing what they think they
heard. Remember, the people are witnesses to a phenomenon out
of nature, a supernatural phenomenon, a disembodied voice.
The same considerations apply to wonders. They are no differ-
ent from the sign the people of Israel witnessed at Mount Sinai:
both require mutual witnessing. But what of the other sort of sign:
predicting the future? Do the same considerations apply in that case
as well? After all, the phenomenon that the people (or person in
the case of private prediction) are witnessing is an entirely natural
phenomenon, a sequence of events or a thing. It requires no belief,
no trust, and no suspension of disbelief. Either the prediction turns
out or it does not. Of course, relying on the predictions of a tested
prophet for the future does require some trust. What if he has lost
his prophetic powers? What if hes lying to gain some private ad-
vantage? But these are the ordinary risks of ordinary life that dont
require reference to prophecy, and fitness for prophecy presumably
protects against their coming to pass. Furthermore, a tested prophet
has a standing in the community that he would be reluctant to throw
away.47 It is not unimportant, then, that Maimonides speaks of this
sort of prophecy separately, in chapter 10, and that unlike the discus-
sions in Halachah 7, chapter 7 (applying the two-witness analogy
without seeming qualification to all prophets other than Moses), and
Halachah 2, chapter 8 (applying the analogy to Moses), he does not
mention the analogy. So it is probable that Maimonides did not mean
the analogy to apply to prophets who successfully predict the future
because for these prophets, the future is its own witness.
The second argument for accepting as true the statements of
a wise man of stature and fit for prophecy explains why the first
argument is necessary: Considering these matters and the like, [Deu-
teronomy 29:28] states: The hidden matters are for God, our Lord,
but what is revealed is for us and our children, and [I Samuel 16:7]
states: Man sees what is revealed to the eyes, but God sees into the
heart.48 We do not need to see into the heart of the prophet who
successfully predicts the future, except to rely on his trustworthiness
as a person. But for all other prophets, we need to know who is in
communication with God and who is not. If we knew that, however,
150 ARTHUR J. JACOBSO N
then we, too, would be prophets, rendering other prophets otiose.

And that is exactly what happened to the Israelites standing with
Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai. With Moses, they witnessed God
prophetically; they witnessed God communicating with Moses. In
that moment, in that limited way, they became prophets. This is Mai-
monidess argument in chapter 8, concerning the nature of Mosess
prophecy. The Israelites believed in Moses, not because he performed
wonders, but because they actually witnessed his appointment as
a prophet. Our eyes saw, and not a strangers. Our ears heard, and
not anothers. There was fire, thunder, and lightning, He entered
the thick clouds; the Voice spoke to him and we heard, Moses,
Moses, go tell them the following.49 It is at just this moment that
Maimonides returns to the legal analogy first used in Halachah 7,
chapter 7. He describes Moses and the people of Israel as two wit-
nesses who observed the same event together. Each one serves as a
witness to his colleague that he is telling the truth, and neither has
to bring any other proof to his colleague.50 In the same way, Moses
and all Israel were witnesses to Gods communication with Moses at
Mt. Sinai, and he did not have to perform any further wonders for
them. Moses is the only prophet whose appointment as a prophet is
absolutely certain. The people of Israel witnessed it and shared in it
as prophets. The people believed in it, not because Torah obligation
required them to overcome their doubts, but because they saw it
with their own eyes and have no doubts.51
So Maimonidess answer to the question, Do the disciples of
the prophets have unlimited access to God in principle, even if
they dont have it in fact? is yes. It is our obligation to treat them
as prophets if they claim to be prophets and if they can somehow
muster the signs or wonders, whether by accident, or because they
are magicians or sorcerers, or because they are, indeed, prophets.
And we have this obligation precisely because we can never, in fact,
know whether any person claiming to be a prophet is or is not a
prophet, unless we ourselves share in the act of prophecy. But then
we should not need prophets.
Hence the only condition under which the soundness of a claim
to prophecy can be established is the condition under which every-
one shares in at least a portion of the prophecy. It is a condition of
a democracy of knowledge. It is a condition in which the prophet,
as a special figure with unique access to prophetic knowledge, is, at

least in part, unnecessary. It is, as for Spinoza, a prophecy without
prophets. In all other cases, a prophet is necessary because we lack
the ability to hear what God wants to tell us. In those cases, prophecy
is necessarily uncertain. Then we must look to the prophets record
of wisdom, fineness of character, broad and correct perspective,
and physical soundnessall excellent indicia of a likelihood that
the prophets advice is well intentioned and politically reliable, none
having anything to do with what we would ordinarily consider divine
communication.
Maimonidess sociology of divine knowledge thus contains three
groups, in contrast to Spinozas two. Spinozas groups are simple
enough: those who have direct access to divine knowledge in fact
and those who have it only in principle. Those who have it only in
principle are, nonetheless, able to recognize whether the knowledge
that propagators are propagating is divine. Spinoza thus creates a
democracy of knowledge in principle, an aristocracy of knowledge
in fact. The democracy tempers and constrains the aristocracy,
however, by insisting on the ability to judge the adequacy of the
aristocracys work.
Maimonidess groups are more complex and divide along some-
what different lines. One group comprises the disciples of the proph-
etsthe ones who are candidates for prophecy but who may or may
not, in fact, be prophets. Even though it is always doubtful that any
given member of this group is a prophet, Torah law obliges one to
treat him as a prophet if he lays claim to prophecy and if his state-
ments are followed one way or the other by signs or wonders. The
truth of the matter is that any particular member of this group
either is or is not a prophet; we just dont know which, and never
will know with any certainty.52 So it would be quite wrong to say of
any member of the group that he is, in principle, a prophet. No
he either is a prophet or he isnt a prophet, but there is no sense in
which he is, in principle, a prophet. The case is quite different for
the group as a whole. We treat the genus disciple as made up ex-
clusively of prophets (or at least that portion of the genus disciple
whose advice is followed by some sort of sign or wonder), knowing
full well that it is not (or probably not) so constituted. We treat both
species within the genus the same way, as prophets in principle or
as a matter of principle. That is to say, we are unjust to the species

of prophets because we do not treat them as prophets but rather as
prophets in principle, and we are unjust also to ourselves, because
we treat the species of nonprophets as prophets in principle, even
though they are not, in fact, prophets. We ignore the question of
prophecy and turn instead to questions of fitness, on one hand, and
signs and wonders, on the other.
A second group is the people in general, who, unlike the disciples
of the prophets, stake no claim to prophecy and do not seek it out.
Many of them, lacking the requisite character, are undoubtedly
unfit for prophecy; some are undoubtedly fit, without wishing to be
prophets. Nonetheless, all of them, fit or unfit, became prophets en
masse on one occasion, when they heard God speaking to Moses at
the foot of Mount Sinai, just before he ascended the mountain for
his extended sojourn with God. In a way, too, Moses was not unlike
the mass of people. He, like them, did not seek out prophecy. He,
like them, had character traits that one can only describe as flaws
(his anger, most notably) and that would not befit another prophet.
He, like them, was not fully physically sound (his stutter). The
greatest of the prophets was most like the people and least like the
prophets. So it is no accident that in the supreme prophetic moment
in all of Torah, at Mount Sinai, Moses and the people should share
at least a fragment of Gods revelation: they heard a voice speaking
the first two of the Ten Commandments.53 Other than this supreme
moment, the role of the people is to judge who of the many striv-
ers for prophetic accomplishment ought to be accorded the benefit
of the prophetic presumption and be treated in principle, or as a
matter of principle, as a prophet. With respect to all prophets other
than Moses, therefore, it is the people in the end, not God, who
make the prophet. Becoming a prophet is an election, not a chrism
anointing an elect.
And finally, a group of one: Moses. The people did not elect
him. Alone among the prophets, God appointed him, not through
signs (at least ordinary signs) or wonders but in public, in open view.
Here it is important to distinguish between private and public. The
private reality, the inner truth, is that some of the candidate prophets
are indeed prophets, some not. Prophecy other than Mosess takes
place in private, while the prophet is asleep: When any of them
prophesy, their limbs tremble, their physical powers become weak,

they lose control of their senses, and thus, their minds are free to
comprehend what they see.54 It is overwhelmingly a physical experi-
ence. At the same time, what the prophet sees while he is asleep is
a message granted to him in metaphoric imagery. Immediately,
the interpretation of the imagery is imprinted upon his heart, and
he knows its meaning.55 The prophet knows that he is experiencing
prophecy. But we dont, and we cant. Similarly, only the one who is
qualified through a sign or wonder knows whether the sign or won-
der is a product of prophecy or of magic and sorcery. (The prophet
who is qualified by successfully predicting the future may be a sor-
cerer or a diviner, Maimonides says, and not a true prophet.)56 The
prophets vision, the real cause of the sign or wonderthese are all
private experiences. The prophecy itself is, in allegory or metaphor,
inaccessible to the public on its own terms. Only the prophet knows
its meaning, and his knowledge is private, in his heart. God gave
Moses prophecies, not as visions, but through open revelations,57
revelations open to all, just as they are, without privileging Mosess
heart. The greatest of the prophets, the one closest to God, laid the
groundwork for the democracy of knowledge.
For Maimonides, as for Spinoza, embracing a democracy of
knowledge requires acquiescence in paradox. For Spinoza, the para-
dox is that people who have imperfect access to Gods nature are
assumed to be able to assess adequately the access of others whose
access may or may not be perfect (or imperfect in different ways). This
is the sine qua non of any democracy, the presumption that every
citizen is able to assess the validity of a report of knowledge without
being able to know that knowledge directly, unmediated by report.
For Maimonides, the paradox is that people who cannot know who
among a field of candidate prophets is a true prophet, because they
cannot know whose signs or wonders are the product of prophecy
and whose are the product of magic or sorcery or divination, are
nonetheless able to know who is a proper candidate, whose signs or
wonders are entitled to the presumption of prophecy even though
he may not, in fact, be a prophet. So long as a candidate shows the
requisite moral and intellectual and physical qualities, so long as he
also presents himself as a prophet, people are obliged to treat him
as onehalachah presumes that he is a propheteven though his
154 ARTHUR J. JACOBSON
signs or wonders are the product of magic or sorcery or divination

and he has only deluded himself into thinking, with greater or lesser
faithfulness, that they are the product of prophecy instead.
Maimonides thus replaces the presence of prophetic communica-
tiona state known with certainty only through divine knowledge
with ordinary judgments about moral, intellectual, and physical condi-
tion, together with a legal presumption connecting these judgments to
the status, now made legal and no longer directly divine, of prophet.
The only prophecy needing certain knowledge of divine origin, there-
fore, is the prophecy establishing that presumptionthe prophecy of
the legal system legislated by Mosesfor it is the presumption that
makes all other prophecy, understood now strictly as a legal status,
possible. Certain divine knowledge becomes common knowledge
at only one moment and for one purpose only: just before Moses
ascends Mount Sinai, to establish him as the prophet of Gods law.
The place of divine public knowledge in Maimonidess Mishneh
Torah thus stands in stark contrast to its place in Spinozas Tractatus.
In the Tractatus, divine public knowledge is the knowledge of na-
ture, of Gods nature, of the world intelligible as law or science. It
is knowledge that is available to everyone, everywhere and always,
in principle, even though it is not available to them in fact. It is law
as principle rather than law as fact. In the Mishneh Torah, in contrast,
divine public knowledge is the knowledge of Mosess appointment
as prophet. It is the knowledge of the foundation of law, of law as
fact. It is not knowledge that is everywhere and always, but only here
and only now. No other public knowledge is divine. This is not to
deny that divine public knowledge has a place in the world. It may
well. But apart from Mosess prophecy, we cannot with certainty
know what that place is.
Nevertheless, the legal presumption that obliges us to accept
as prophet a person of the proper moral, intellectual, and physical
character who successfully predicts the future gives us what may be
described as derivative or second-order divine public knowledge, by
comparison with direct or first-order divine public knowledge, such as
the publics knowledge of Mosess appointment. For the legal system
validated by the knowledge of Mosess appointment obliges us to
regard as divine successful prediction by disciples of the prophets.
The divinity of a successful prediction is certain only derivatively.

Its direct divinity can only be possible, not certain.
A disciple of the prophets who successfully predicts the future may
well consider his prediction to be prophecy. But if his predictions are
to be predictably successful over a sustained period, what the disciple
must in effect be doing is some sort, however intuitive or primitive,
of political or moral or natural science, and the judgment by which
the people accept or reject the disciple as a prophet is not prophetic
but ordinary democratic judgment. What Maimonides describes,
then, is no less than the transformation of law into science.
Spinoza says in his Tractatus that today, we have, so far as he knows,
no prophets.58 Maimonides would disagree. Certainly there are no
miracles and no prophets qualified by wonders or by signs of the
sort the people of Israel heard at the foot of Mount Sinai. But there
is predicting the future, there is broadening ones own perspective
and increasing ones own knowledge. Both of these are prophecy in
the hands of the right person. Both are limited to the few. Neither
requires miracles. So there are prophets. We just dont call them that
anymore. We call them scientists and philosophers instead.
156 ARTHUR J. JACOBSO N
Notes
the translations of Spinoza are my own. In addition to citing Carl

Gebhardts standard Latin edition of the Tractatus, Spinoza, Opera, vol.
3 (Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winters Universitaetsbuchhandlung,
1972), I cite page numbers for the two most widespread translations
of the Tractatus into English: Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-
Politicus, trans. Samuel Shirley (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1991),
and Spinoza, The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, vol. 1, trans. Robert
Harvey Monro Elwes (New York: Dover, 1951). In the Gebhardt edi-
tion, I first cite the page number for the text of the Tractatus, then, in
brackets, the page number for the volume as a whole. I would like to
thank Dimitris Vardoulakis for encouragement and my wife, Peninah
Petruck, for many excellent suggestions.
1 Gebhardt, 2 [16], ll. 67; Shirley, 60; Elwes, 14.

3 Gebhardt, 1 [15], ll. 1820, 2728; Shirley, 59; Elwes, 14.
5 See n. 2.
7 And certainly from the fact that God revealed Himself to Christ
or to his mind in a non-mediated way and not as to the prophets,
through words and images, we are able to understand nothing other
than that Christ perceived or understood revealed things truly. For
a thing is understood when it is perceived by the pure mind itself,
without words and images. Gebhardt, 50 [64]; Shirley, 1078;
Elwes, 64.
8 Gebhardt, 2 [16], ll. 67; Shirley, 60; Elwes, 14. But, although natural
knowledge is divine, its propagators cannot be called prophets. For
the rest of humanity are able to perceive and consider what they
teach with a certainty and dignity equal to theirs, and this not only
through faith.
10 Spinoza makes this last point clear only indirectly, by characterizing
its opposite in hypothetical terms only. See Gebhardt, 100 [114], ll.
1724; Shirley, 157; Elwes, 116.

14 Gebhardt, 100 [114], l. 31; 101 [115], l. 8; Shirley, 157; Elwes, 116.
15 The Apostles were, of course, speaking Aramaic, not Hebrew.
18 Maimonides meant his Guide to reconcile those troubled by science
to religious orthodoxy. Spinoza meant his Tractatus to reconcile
those troubled by religious orthodoxy to science. Spinoza thus
conceived of his Tractatus as the anti-Guide.
19 It is one of the foundations of our faith that God communicates
by prophecy with man. Chapter 7, Halachah 1, 244.
20 Ibid., 24446.
21 Ibid., 246. Words in brackets in the translations of Maimonidess
text are in brackets in the original translation. They indicate edito-
rial additions in the interests of clarity.
22 Ibid., 248.
23 Ibid., 246.
24 Chapter 7, Halachah 4, 25052.
27 Numbers 12: 8. Ibid., 254.
28 Ibid., 256.
29 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 260.
34 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 284.
39 Ibid., 288.
41 Chapter 8, Halachah 1, 262. Maimonides says this explicitly only
in the context of wonders. Magic and sorcery as possible causes
of signs are implicit in the argument of Halachah 2, chapter 8,

however.
43 Any prophet who arises and tells us that god has sent him does
not have to [prove himself by] performing wonders like those
performed by Moses, our teacher, or like the wonders of Elijah
or Elisha, which altered the natural order. Rather, the sign of [the
truth of his prophecy] will be the fulfillment of this prediction of
future events. Chapter 10, Halachah 1, 28284.
46 Ibid. See text accompanying n. 43.
47 Nonetheless, Maimonides recognizes the risk that a tested prophet
may fail for some reason: Once a prophet has made known his
prophecy and his words have proven true time after time, or another
prophet has proclaimed him a prophet, if he continues in the path
of prophecy, it is forbidden to doubt him or to question the truth
of his prophecy. Chapter 10, Halachah 5, 29294.
49 Chapter 8, Halachah 1, 262, 264.
52 Even disciples of the prophets whose sign is successfully predicting
the future cant be known to be prophets with any certainty. The
most Maimonides is prepared to say of such a person is that he
should be considered to be a true prophet (chapter 10, Halachah
2, 286) or that it is forbidden to doubt him or to question the truth
of his prophecy (chapter 10, Halachah 5, 294). It is telling that
Maimonides does not declare the person a prophet in the indicative,
only in the normative.
53 So holds rabbinic tradition, with which Maimonides would have
been intimately familiar. In rabbinic tradition, the first two com-
mandments are I am (the Lord) and Thou shalt not have (...
before Me). See comment on Moses spoke in Rabbi Abraham
ben Isaiah and Rabbi Benjamin Sharfman, trans., The Pentateuch and
Rashis Commentary: A Linear Translation into English, vol. 2, Exodus
(Brooklyn, N.Y.: S.S. & R., 1950), 19:19, 209.

7
Interjecting Empty
Spaces: Imagination and
Interpretation in Spinozas
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
warran montag
no single work has contributed more to the resurgence of inter-

est in Spinoza in the English-speaking world in the last decade than
Jonathan Israels Radical Enlightenment.1 By insisting on the existence
of an Enlightenment within the Enlightenment, and therefore on the
existence of two (or perhaps more) Enlightenments, Israel makes
visible the differences and even contradictions that divided the
party of reason. We may even attach names to the poles he defines:
Lockes complicit and therefore only partial Enlightenment appears
in contrast to Spinozas uncompromising rejection of every form
of supernaturalism and superstition. Accordingly, what was radical
about the radical enlightenment was not simply or even primarily a
matter of the political doctrine or conception of society advanced by
its partisans but rather the radicality of the critical attitude itself, the
capacity to subject to critique the greatest possible number of ideas,
practices, and institutions. Thus Lockes unwillingness to subject the
foundations of Christianity to critique allowed a certain form of
supernaturalism to contaminate both his philosophical and politi-
cal theories; in contrast, it was the very lawlessness of Spinozas
philosophical enterprise (to use Kants phrase), Spinozas refusal to
impose limits on his own use of reason, that made his philosophy a
pure specimen of Enlightenment thought.
161
162 W AR R EN M ONTAG
But Israel is not content to confer this status on Spinoza merely

on the basis of the content of his texts alone; rather he judges Spi-
noza the central figure of the radical enlightenment on the basis
of the effects his texts produced, and these effects can be measured
quantitatively. No philosophical corpus provoked an equal or greater
number of responses, critiques, attacks, and legal forms of exclu-
sion and censorship over a longer period of time than Spinozas. It
is these negative effects (which overwhelmingly outnumber the
few, usually anonymous, defenses of Spinoza) that allow us to de-
termine not only the force of his philosophy but its very meaning.
The implications of such an argument for Spinoza are particularly
striking. His texts, especially the Ethics, present difficulties of such
magnitude for readers today that it appears plausible to attribute to
Spinoza the intention of writing a work unreadable to a world pre-
sumed in advance unprepared for its truth. Israel, following others
before him,2 shows that Spinozas works presented few difficulties
to his contemporaries, who, precisely to denounce them, had first
to ascribe to them a meaning incarnate in at least some portions
of the text. It is to these critics that Israel turns to discover what in
Spinozas philosophy can be called radical.
What is it that so disturbed Spinozas critics? Israels answer not
only compels us to ask how radical the radical enlightenment was
but, perhaps even more important, forces us to reconsider what
we mean by Enlightenment. Spinoza, in his view, takes the side of
naturalism against supernaturalism, of reason against both faith
and revelation, far more consistently than the wavering and hesitant
Locke, whose Christian devotion places severe limits on his com-
mitment to Enlightenment. In the realm of political theory, Spinoza
not only deprives every notion of society as a natural order of any
claim to divine provenance but replaces it with a conception of hu-
manity as consisting of originally dissociated individuals motivated
by self-interest alone, for whom a democratic state would be the
most natural form of society. Spinoza, for Israel, is therefore Hob-
bes without the absolutist afterthoughts that fatally compromise his
otherwise powerful efforts at demystification.
To take only these examples, there are a number of objections
one might address to Israels interpretation of Spinoza. Spinozas
supposed faith in reason and knowledge would appear incompatible
INTERJECTING EMPTY SPACES 163
with many of the arguments in both the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

and the Ethics (especially Parts III and IV). We might well ask whether
faith in reason, or a conception of reason that requires faith, is itself
rational. In fact, the very notion of faith in reason presents one of
the dilemmas that Spinoza seeks to investigate in the Ethics, which
arguably pursues the possibility of reason in the absence of faith of
any kind. As far as Spinozas political thought comprising an early
form of methodological individualism and rational choice theory,
while there are those who offer such interpretations of his texts
(primarily in the English-speaking world3), such claims can only
be sustained in relation to the actual texts by the very hermeneutic
procedures that Spinoza singles out for criticism in chapter 7 of the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Indeed, the Spinoza scholarship of
the last thirty years suggests that there exists a third Enlightenment
that is irreducible to either holism or atomism, collectivism or indi-
vidualism, liberalism or absolutism.4 This Enlightenment surfaces
intermittently in Israels text, but always at its margins, unrecognized
and untheorized.
In the spirit of this critique of Radical Enlightenment, I want to
examine what is, for Israel, one of the most important components
of Spinozas philosophical radicalism, namely, the critique of revealed
religion in its most concrete form, the scripture: No other part of
Spinozas assault on authority, tradition and faith proved so generally
disquieting as his Bible criticism.5 Drawing from Spinozas many
critics, Israel concludes that Spinozas treatment of both the scripture
itself and biblical commentary is essentially negative and destruc-
tive, as if Spinozas objective is to deprive scripture not only of any
authority at all but of its very meaning, hoping thereby to reduce it
to letters on paper without significance and therefore without effect.
Interestingly, the very uncompromising intransigence that Israel hails
as the mark of the radical enlightenment is what for Hegel (in the
Phenomenology of Spirit) constitutes its limitation, defining precisely
the dependence of Enlightenment on the world of faith in relation
to which alone it has meaning, if only the meaning of negation.
After prejudice and superstition are banished, asks Hegel, what then
for Enlightenment? What then, we might ask, for Israels Spinoza,
whose destruction of prejudice and superstition could have no
other effect than to render his own philosophy superfluous? It isnt
164 W ARR EN M ONTAG
necessary, however, to look outside of Spinoza for an objection to

Israels conception of his radicalism. His philosophy itself compels
us to ask not so much whether such a destruction of the idols is
desirable but, rather, whether it is possible. And if it is not possible
once and for all to banish superstition, then to desire it becomes
the very rejection of reality in favor of nonexistent norms that for
Spinoza define superstition, in this case, a superstition of reason.
Furthermore, from the point of view of Spinozas own theses in the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, is it possible for him, as Israel claims, to
dismiss the entire corpus of previous Biblical interpretation whether
Christian or Jewish,6 as if every word written by commentators for
well over a thousand years was nothing more than superstition, utterly
devoid of reason and therefore without meaning, or to use a more
properly Spinozist idiom, effects? Can Spinozas actual treatment of
previous commentary (as determined by his allusion, references, and
citations) be described as a rejection? In other words, is that what
actually happens in Spinozas text? Finally, to the extent that we
can extract from Spinoza a theory of interpretationor, as Louis
Althusser insisted, a theory of reading7does this theory permit
a simple rejection of texts deemed superstitious or supernatural,
as if the texts in question contained nothing other than what their
authors intended or desired them to contain?
For Spinoza, the practice of scriptural interpretation was domi-
nated by the assumption that the text in one and the same movement
stated a meaning and concealed it, presenting to the reader a surface
that veiled and protected the truth beneath (the Epistle Dedicatory
to Maimonidess Guide of the Perplexed offers a privileged example
of such an assumption).8 To read was then necessarily to move from
the appearance of disorder (not simply doctrinal but even literal),
contradiction, and discrepancy to a hidden order and harmony, and
even from the absence of meaning (what Maimonides calls absur-
dity) to its dissimulated presence. It is possible to speak of Spinozas
inversion of this procedure in chapters 710 insofar as he moves from
the unity, order, and presence attributed to the text by the majority
of those he terms theologians (theologos) to inconsistency, disorder,
and absence, which are, for him, irreducible? To say that he moves
from the former to the latter is not to say, however, that order and
harmony constitute properties of the text at all, whether of its sur-

face or its putative depth. For Spinoza, these qualities are not to be
found in the text at all. They have instead been added to and imposed
on the text from without as an external covering in which the text
is always transmitted in a process Spinoza describes as adulteration
and contamination. This covering, praetextum in Latin, is precisely
a pre-text, in the sense that it advances before the text, interposing
itself between the text and its readers.
But we might also pause over the term Spinoza applies to those
he accuses of having attempted to extort from Scripture their own
arbitrarily invented ideas, the term theologians (theologos).9 Spinoza
does not use the term commentator or even interpreter here, as he
does elsewhere, but theologian, a pointedly Christian word and idea
that suggests a disregard not only for nature, seeking God outside
of creation, but even more for scripture in its literal existence. The
text of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus shows very clearly that Spi-
noza does not include in this category two of the most prominent
Jewish commentators, Rashi and Ibn Ezra, both of whom are cited
in support of his own interpretations of biblical passages. Spinoza
goes so far as to refer to Ibn Ezra as a man of enlightened mind and
considerable learning.10 In a similar way, although disagreeing with
Gersonidess account of the chronology of the Pentateuch, even
accusing him of emending rather than interpreting scripture,11
Spinoza is careful not to dismiss Gersonidess other commentaries.
Thus he tells the reader that Gersonides was in other respects a man
of great learning.12 These judgments stand in stark contrast to his
scornful dismissal not only of kabbalistic approaches to scripture but,
more interestingly, even of the Targumim, or Aramaic translations
of the scripture. The Targumim, of course, recall the figure who
emerges as Spinozas main adversary in chapters 710 of the Trac-
tatus Theologico-Politicus: Maimonides, who relies frequently on the
Targum Onkelos and the Targum Yonatan to support his devaluation
of the literal existence of the text. However indebted to Maimonides
Spinoza may be in his account of prophecy and his critique of the
anthropomorphism of superstition, when discussing Maimonidess
approach to the interpretation of scripture, Spinoza applies such
terms as absurdity, nonsense, rubbish, and so on. Even here, however,
it is possible to argue that Spinozas critique of Maimonides pertains

more to what the latter says than to what he does, to use Althussers
phrase, that is, to the statement of method advanced at the begin-
ning of the Guide for the Perplexed rather than the actual reading of
scripture in Maimonidess discussion of the incorporeality of God,
which may very well deviate in important respects from the project
Maimonides appears to have set out for himself.
Thus we can only conclude that rather than dismissing the entire
corpus of previous Bible interpretation,13 as Israel argues, it appears
that Spinoza has instead drawn a line of demarcation through this
corpus, making visible an antagonism internal to it and, moreover,
taking the side of one part against the other. It is important to note
that this line in no way respects the integrity of textual boundaries or
the proprietary rights of authorship but, on the contrary, separates
works and authors from themselves. If Spinoza has indeed not re-
jected Jewish Bible interpretation but drawn a distinction within it, it
remains for us to specify the nature of this difference. But we cannot
pass on to his arguments without noting that Spinozas intervention
is conducted entirely within the realm of Jewish commentary; not
a single Christian theologian or interpreter is named or referred to
in any way in the text.
To begin to understand the function of this line of demarcation,
we might turn to the precise terms of Spinozas denunciation of the
theologians: In no other field have they acted with so few scruples
and so much temerity as in the interpretation of Scripture, or the
mind of the Holy Spirit (Scriptura, sive Spiritus Sancti mente).14 This is
another of those extraordinary moments (which, to my knowledge,
no one has noted or discussed before) in which Spinoza employs the
Latin conjunction sive (or) as an elliptical form of argumentation,
suggesting an equivalence or even identity between terms whose
relation was normally thought of as one of hierarchical dependence.
In the case of Deus, sive Natura (God, or Nature) from the preface
to Part IV of the Ethics, the conjunction sive establishes the identity
of God and nature to exclude any recourse to transcendence: one
does not look beyond God for God, for a God beyond God. God is
his creation: all that he can be and do necessarily is. The operation
of the sive in chapter 7 of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, however,
seems more complicated in certain respects. In this case, the assump-

tion that the scripture is the expression of the Holy Spirit is displaced
by the assertion that the scripture is not an expression of anything
but is itself the mind (mente) of the Holy Spirit, as if this mind is
coextensive with the scripture in its actual existence. If scripture is
the mind of the Holy Spirit and not one of its expressionsif, to use
the language Spinoza employs in the Ethics, the mind of the Holy
Spirit is the immanent cause of scripturethen, like God in relation
to nature, it cannot be said to exist outside of or prior to the written
and therefore material form in which it exists. The Holy Spirit, or
rather its mind (and it is indeed curious that the spiritus possesses a
mente), no longer exists outside the scripture as a reservoir of meaning
to which contradictions might be referred and thus resolved. While
to the perplexed, scripture in its literal existence appears contradic-
tory and disordered, Spinoza, by declaring it the mind of the Holy
Spirit, reminds us that order and coherence in the apprehension of
scripture, as in the case of nature, pertain to the imagination, which
compares that which exists to norms that exist nowhere but in the
imagination itself.15 In the case of scripture, as in nature, reality and
perfection are the same thing (cf. Ethics II, D6).
To contemplate the mind of the Holy Spirit as it is, however,
independently of the external coverings that seem always to have
accompanied it, is not an easy task. In a very important sense, the
scripture as it is only becomes available to us when we draw a line
of demarcation separating it from the pre-texts that are woven not
only around it but even into it, filling its gaps and covering the seams
and joints that mark its composite nature. If we follow Spinozas
arguments carefully, we can draw the inference that there exist
two kinds of praetexta, or pretexts. The first is characteristic of
the translations from Hebrew, translations that (interestingly, even
to this day, with very few exceptions) do not so much render the
scripture as it actually is in Hebrew as they do corrupt and distort
an originally faulty, mutilated, and obviously composite work into
consistency and intelligibility. All the difficulties and ambiguities
that characterize the Hebrew (the equivocity that is so important
in Maimonidess account of scripture), from the inconsistencies of
verb tense, noun inflection, and even spelling to the fact that the
meaning of certain words is no longer known, disappear in the

translations. Furthermore, many translations resolve the frequent
inconsistencies that plague the different historical accounts of the
same epochs either by addition or omission but always without noting
that they have replaced the actual text with another, different text.
Of all the translations Spinoza might single out for criticism,
he chooses one that will be unfamiliar to all but a handful of those
likely to read a philosophical treatise in Latin: Spinoza will go so far
as to describe the Targum Yonatan ben Uzziel (referred to in the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus as the work of the Chaldaen Paraphrast
Jonathan) as a rejection of scripture as it actually is (he uses the verb
negare [to reject, deny, or negate], which he often employs to describe
the activity of biblical commentators and interpreters) and a fabrica-
tion of something new out of his own brain (ex proprio cerebro) (he
uses the verb cudo, a verb used to describe the activity of a metal or
blacksmith, rather than verbs like excogitare, denoting mental activity,
or even fabricare, facere, or fingere, which denote a physical making).16
This Targum, of course, is a stand-in for translations far more familiar
to his audience (e.g., the Vulgate, an extraordinarily inaccurate transla-
tion of many of the passages that Spinoza examines): Spinoza takes
as an example the Targums Aramaic rendering of a passage from
Joshua. He cites the Hebrew and the Aramaic and translates them
into Latin to show the discrepancy, simultaneously demonstrating
that the translation is itself a commentary that illuminates the text
by altering its meaning and thereby changing it into something it is
not. Gebhardt, in the Opera, preserves these passages in the original,
presenting the Hebrew with Spinozas Latin translation, followed by
the Aramaic of Targum Yonatan and its Latin rendering, whereas in
Shirleys translation, they disappear. It is possible, I believe, to assign
the citations from an alphabet few readers could decipher a strategic
function: perhaps by confronting his audience with a translation
of scripture into a language that is not only foreign (one might be
tempted to say Other) but non-Christian, Spinoza incites his readers
to proceed without further comment to question the Vulgate text,
not to mention the vernacular translations.17
I want to focus my discussion of Spinozas critique of the tradi-
tional forms of scriptural interpretation by examining in some detail
the concluding paragraph of chapter 9 of the Tractatus Theologico-

Politicus. It is in relation to this passage, which might at first appear to
occupy a minor place in the architecture of Spinozas argument, that
he identifies yet another property of scripture in its actual existence
that disappears in translationin this case, not what is present but
what is absent. The oldest extant Hebrew texts, while not themselves
translations, are nevertheless transcriptions or copies and are not only
susceptible to error but based on texts that are themselves copies of
originals that have been lost forever. The very fidelity of the scribes
led them to note the flaws in the most authoritative texts available to
them. The scribes of old have noted several doubtful readings and
also a number of mutilated passages (loca truncata), but not all there
are.18 Just as Spinoza appears poised to suggest that the scripture in
its present form is even less coherent than previously thought, even
by those whose business it was to guard the authenticity of the text
by the counting of letters and words, he declines to continue this
discussion: I shall not at this point discuss the question as to whether
the faults (mendae) are of such a kind to cause serious difficulty to the
reader.19 The next sentence, however, proceeds to the discussion that
Spinoza has just foresworn. He tells us that he is of the opinion that
the mutilated passages will not cause serious difficulty or at least not
to the judicious reader.20 But what distinguishes the judicious from
the injudicious reader? He seems here to suggest that the judicious
accept the text, simple and limited as it is, offering little more than
ethical doctrines that might as well be found among nations utterly
ignorant of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and refrain from
abandoning the text as it is in search of hidden meaning.
But Spinoza is not merely interested in the loca truncata because
they limit speculation and restrict the reader to the simple instruction
that can indubitably be derived from scripture. Indeed, he returns
to the question of mutilated places in the text at the end of chapter
9. He remarks that scribes have noted a number of cases of mu-
tilated texts by leaving a space in mid paragraph. The Massoretes
have counted them, enumerating 28 cases where a space is left in
mid-paragraph.... There are twenty-eight such spaces left by the
scribes, apart from the passages we have already noted. Yet many of
these passages would not be recognized as mutilated, were it not for
the space.21 Of the twenty-eight cases, Spinoza chooses to examine

a passage that has not only been a focal point of commentary but
has raised questions central to his philosophical project: Genesis 4:
8, the narrative of Cain and Abel. Spinozas Latin translation differs
totally from the Vulgate text and would be unfamiliar to all but those
able to read the Hebrew: And Kain said to his brother Abel ... and
it happened that they went out into the field where Kain, etc. (
) .22
Spinoza thus, citing the Massoretes, restores to the line the gap
or absence that is unmistakable in Hebrew and which, as we shall
see, has furnished occasion for a significant quantity of commentary
but which has been obscured by translations that impose on the text
a coherence that the original does not possess. According to the
Vulgate translation, the verse runs, And Cain said to his brother
Abel, let us go out into the field etc. Not only, of course, does the
Vulgate obscure the gap, but adds meaning that is not to be found
in the Hebrew, increasing Cains guilt by suggesting that he lured his
brother into the fields to slay him out of jealousy at Gods favoring
Abels offering. The case of Jewish commentators is somewhat dif-
ferent. The gaps and other difficulties in the text, of course, remain
in the original Hebrew, but the edition to which Spinoza refers by
name, the Bomberg Bible (the Mikraot Gedoloot or Rabbinical
Bible), surrounds each passage of scripture with a combination of
commentaries and Aramaic translations to supply what the text
itself lacks and to resolve its apparent contradictions. In the case of
Genesis 4:8, the appearance of the gap to which Spinoza refers has
necessitated interpretive suturing. The Targum Yonatan supplies a
more elaborate (and also more nuanced) content to Cains utterance
than the Vulgate: Cain indeed exhorts his brother to go into the
field with him; while there, the two engage in a disputation about
whether the good are rewarded and the unjust punished. It is only
when Abel claims that his works were better ordered than Cains
and thus deserved Gods favor that Cain rose against him in anger and
killed him. At the other extreme is Rashis interpretive minimalism.
Rashi merely poses the question of what Cain said to Abel, noting
the missing text and suggesting that he provoked an argument with
Abel to anger him and in this way justify slaying him.
Interestingly, Spinoza says nothing more about the possible signifi-

cance of this gap for the meaning of the Cain and Abel episode, nor
does he say anything more about the significance of gaps in general
in the text of the scripture or that they disappear into the continuity
invented by translators or are explained away by commentary. In
fact, he ends the chapter with a phrase that appears only one other
time in his entire corpus: Sed de his Satis (but of this enough). It is the
phrase with which his last unfinished work, the Tractatus Politicus,
stops, even if it does not exactly conclude. It suggests that Spinoza
has more to say on the topics in question, or perhaps thinks there
is more to be said, but either does not want to or cannot say more
about them. What more might be said about the empty spaces left
by scribes in the middle of paragraphs? We might begin to think
about this problem by noting that what translator Samuel Shirley has
rendered as leaving a space in mid paragraph is, in Spinozas Latin,
in medio paragrapho spatium vacuum interponitur. The verb interpono
denotes an action on the part of the scribes, an active placing of a
space (Spinoza uses the verb intericio, which denotes a similar action,
two sentences later ), rather than a passive leaving of a space that
was in some sense already present. I want to ask whether the act of
interposing or interjecting (to translate the Latin verbs very literally)
empty spaces is not constitutive of Spinozas theory of the interpreta-
tion of scripture, whether the act of interpretation must not begin
with the notation of the seams and joints of a composite text and
therefore the disruption of its illusory coherence and continuity to
open the way to a knowledge of its historical existence.
But does Spinozas argument pertain to the very unusual, if not
unique, case of scripture alone? To take such a position would be to
confirm Israels argument that Spinozas reading of scripture seeks
to devalue it in its very singularity, demonstrating that it, far from
being the exemplary book, is markedly inferior to most other works
in its coherence, continuity, and consistency, and that the commen-
taries that attribute to it what it does not possess are as illusory and
useless as the text on which they are based. Before we adopt such
a position, however, we would do well to consider Spinozas own
statement to the contrary. At the end of chapter 10 of the Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus, and therefore at the conclusion of his long and
detailed demonstration of the inconsistencies, discontinuities, and

contradictions that characterize scripture as it is in its actual existence,
he recognizes that perhaps someone will object that I am plainly
subverting scripture [scriptura plane everterewhich could also be
translated as completely destroying or overturning scripture], for
according to this argument everyone can suspect it of being every-
where faulty.23 What he has done, he protests, is instead to separate
the faulty and corrupt from the clear and pure and prevent the latter
from being harmonized with the former in a protocol of reading that
sees the reconciliation of apparently discordant and heteronomous
elements as the condition of a texts intelligibility. To note the pres-
ence of certain faulty passages does not render the entire text suspect
and thus, as he puts it, overthrow or destroy it. It is at this point that
Spinoza appeals not to the singularity of scripture as an unusually
heteroclite text but precisely the contrary: No book is found without
faults (nullus enim liber unquam sine mendis repertus est).24
The sentence that follows (An quaeso ea de causa ubique mendosos
aliquis unquam suspicatus est? Nemo sane: preasertum quando oratio est
perspicua, & mens authoris clare percipitur [Has anyone for this reason
suspected that it is everywhere faulty? No one has done so, especially
when the meaning is obvious and the authors intention clear]) dem-
onstrates that by faults, Spinoza does not mean textual corruption,
the errors of printers or scribes, but rather places at which the text
deviates from what he calls mens authoris, literally, the authors mind or
intellect, which can be clearly perceived elsewhere in the oratio.25
Spinozas use of the term oratio is in turn significant: though Shirley
translates it as book, it in fact suggests that faults, deviations from
the authors mind, occur not simply in books, as he suggests in the
previous sentence, but in any discourse, whether spoken or written.
Such faults, then, appear necessarily to pertain to discourse in general
and not merely to a text as unusual in its history and composition
as the Bible. Indeed, if we follow Spinozas argument, it is not too
much to maintain that we may thus speak of the empty spaces to
be interjected in any text whatever, that is, the space between what
the author thought and did not think but wrote anyway, the space
between what the author wanted to say and actually did say. The act
of interpretation would then begin with a refusal of the principle of
the coherence of texts and a recognition of the necessity of drawing

a line of demarcation that marks the existence of a fault or fault line.
Furthermore, we should note that Spinozas argument here neither
depends on nor even evokes a distinction between the inside and
outside of texts or that between the hidden and the manifest; on
the contrary, the text displays its divergent meanings on its surface.
It is only the imagination of order and harmony that stands in the
way of the knowledge of a text.
Even if we developed Spinozas argument no further than this,
we could see the way in which Spinozas relation to Jewish biblical
commentary cannot be reduced to rejection. The commentators
inevitably said more and other than what they wanted to say, offering
in the same text, perhaps, conflicting theories of God, nature, and
scripture. Regardless of their intentions and beliefs; authors may
well produce works that themselves subvert superstition and super-
naturalism. But we cannot leave Spinozas argument at this point:
even to speak of a work originating in the intention of the author
(irrespective of whether or not it should later deviate, in whole or in
part, from that intention) is to ignore Spinozas own critique of the
very notion of intention, the idea that works of art, buildings, paint-
ings, and so on, are the realization of a preexisting intention (Ethics
III, P2S). Such notions are products of the imagination that invert
causes and effects, supposing, in this case, that the work we wrote
was determined by our mind alone, whereas, in fact, the intention
arose simultaneously with the work produced, the causes of which
we remain ignorant, and was projected into the past as an origin, a
cause. Just as the coward believes he or she has freely chosen to flee
and could have stayed to fight, or the alcoholic that he or she chooses
to drink and could just as freely choose not to do so, so those who
speak and, let us add, write think they do so by virtue of a free
decision of the mind (Ethics III, P2S). In fact, for Spinoza, authorial
intention can never exist outside of or prior to its textual effects and
therefore cannot serve as a point around which an otherwise diverse
text could be unified. To refer the contradictions, gaps, and discrepan-
cies of a text to the author, as Maimonides does at the beginning of
the Guide, whether to refer them to the authors cunning or failures,
is to divert attention way from the only place where something like
intention can be said to exist: in the text itself. We may now appreci-
ate Spinozas rather disconcerting use of the term mens, or mind,
in relation to texts: Scriptura, sive Spiritus Sancti mente, together with
the idea that one perceives the mens authoris, or authors mind, in
the work, not through it or by means of it. As Spinoza argues in the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, we do not know what we think or believe,
except by virtue of works.26 Our intentions do not exist prior to our
works, nor can they be without them. It is in this sense that a text in
its actual existence can more accurately be described as the mind of
the author than any disembodied repository of potential meanings.
It remains, however, to account for the fact that no work is
found without faults, that is, that no work can be found that does
not diverge from itself, exhibiting between its dissociated meanings
nothing other than the empty space that marks the impossibility of
these meanings being reconciled. Moved by conflicting and contra-
dictory forces to a great extent unknown to us, we produce texts
that escape us in so many ways, less hollow containers of meanings
than full (although always composite) bodies affecting and being af-
fected by other bodies ad infinitum. To follow Spinoza to the letter
is to translate mind into text and text into body and to understand
meaning as effect. But few are those who can follow Spinoza on this
path, a fact that returns us to Jonathan Israels account of Spinoza. If
Spinozas relation to the history of biblical commentary cannot, as I
have argued, be reduced to one of rejection, it is not simply because
his conception of the texts of the commentators is more complex
than Israels; it is also, and perhaps even more importantly, because,
for Spinoza, there can be no irreversible historical passage from
superstition to knowledge or from imagination to reason. In this
sense, Spinoza appears closer to Hegel than we might have thought:
even Enlightenment can generate its own superstitions, with faith in
Enlightenment, faith in the progress of knowledge, being one of its
most potent forms. I will conclude by returning to the conclusion
of chapter 9 of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Can we understand
the reference to Cain and Abel, more precisely, to the empty space
where what Cain said to Abel should have been, as itself an alle-
gory of the relation between imagination and interpretation? I refer
here not to the account of Cain and Abel itself but to the unfailing
tendency of commentators to supply what they deemed was lacking:

the addition of the entire apparatus of free will and responsibility
to the determination of bodies. To call scripture with its faults,
empty spaces, contradictions, and corruptions the mind of the
Holy Spirit is to declare it perfect, that is, to refuse to relate it to
any norm in relation to which it could be deemed flawed. Spinoza
compels us to reconceptualize these terms in such a way that they
cease evoking a norm external to the reality of the work and instead
function as markers of the composite and heterogeneous nature
even of any body, including texts. It is only from the perspective of
the imagination (a perspective not only inescapable for the human
individual caught in the infinite flux of causes and effects but also a
perspective codified and embodied in the apparatus of superstition
and domination) that the determination of bodies by other bodies
lacks the dimension of will and intention. These apparatus require
such a dimension if they are to extract from this flux singular indi-
viduals to deem them responsible and subject to punishment; not
only those who, like Cain, kill their fellow human beings but also
those who, like Spinoza, seek to produce a philosophy adequate to
a world without transcendence.
Notes
1 Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making
of Modernity, 16501750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2 See esp. Rosalie L. Colie, Spinoza and England 16651730, Pro-
ceedings of the American Philosophy Society 107 (1963): 183219, and
Paul Vernire, Spinoza et la pense franaise avant la Rvolution (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1982).
3 See the work of Lee Rice, Douglas Den Uyl, and Steven Barbone.
4 I refer to work strangely absent from Israels text: Pierre Macherey,
Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris: Maspero, 1979); Antonio Negri, The Savage
Anomaly (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); Pierre-
Franois Moreau, Spinoza: lexprience et lternit (Paris, Presses
Universitaires de France, 1994).
5 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 447.
6 Ibid.
7 Louis Althusser, Reading Capital (London: New Left Books, 1970),
16.
8 Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, 2 vols., trans. Shlomo
Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 1:11: Now
consider the explicit affirmation of the Sages, may their memory
be blessed, that the internal meaning of the words of the Torah
is a pearl whereas the external meaning of all parables is worth
nothing, and their comparison of the concealment of a subject
by its parables external meaning to a man who let drop a pearl in
his house which was dark and full of furniture. Now the pearl is
there, but he does not see it and does not know where it is. It is as
though it were no longer in his possession, as it is impossible for
him to derive any benefit from it until, as has been mentioned, he
lights a lampan act to which an understanding of the meaning
of a parable corresponds.
9 Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, trans. Samuel Shirley
(Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1991), 140. Spinoza, Opera, ed. Carl
Gebhardt (Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winter, 1925), 3:97.
10 Spinoza, Tractatus, 161.
11 Ibid., 304.
12 Ibid., 3034.
13 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 447.
14 Spinoza, Tractatus, 140; Spinoza, Opera, 3:97.
15 See, e.g., Spinozas letter to Henry Oldenburgh, November 20, 1665:
I do not attribute to nature beauty, ugliness, order or confusion.
It is only with respect to our imagination that things can be said
to be beautiful, ugly, well-ordered or confused. Baruch Spinoza,
The Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1995),
192.
16 Spinoza, Tractatus, 166 (translation modified); Spinoza, Opera,
3:123.
17 For a comprehensive discussion of Spinozas use of Hebrew, see
Philippe Cassuto, Spinoza hbraisant (Paris: E. Peeters, 1999).
3:141.
3:141.

3:141.
3:141.
3:141.
26 We cannot know anyone except by his works. Spinoza, Tractatus,
123; Spinoza, Opera, 3:80.
8
Marx before Spinoza:
Notes toward an
Investigation
cesare casarino
It is indeed the new world system, the third stage of capi-

talism, which is for us the absent totality, Spinozas God or
Nature, the ultimate (indeed, perhaps the only) referent, the
true ground of Being of our own time.
Fredric Jameson
Prefatory Remarks on the Foundations of Spinozist Marxism

Toward the end of his essay Lenin before Hegel, Louis Althusser
takes his leave of the readers by hurling at them the following itali-
cized provocation: A century and a half later no one has understood
Hegel because it is impossible to understand Hegel without having thoroughly
studied and understood Capital.1 The possibly unwitting wit of this
pronouncement lies in its casting G.W.F. Hegel in the role of Karl
Marxs famous ape. (I am referring to that passage in the Grundrisse in
which Marx writes, Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy
of the ape.2) My own provocation in this essay may not be as witty
but may well end up being just as hyperbolic and perhaps just as
questionable. In brief, this essay argues that it is impossible to make
sense of Baruch Spinoza without making sense first of Marx. (As we
shall see, the term sense has specific connotations and crucial import
for the arguments of this essay.) In particular, this essay argues that
there are aspects of Spinozas thought that become intelligible for
179
180 C E SARE CASAR I NO
the first time if and when read through the lens of Marxs thought:
I argue that, for better or for worse, Marx has had an irreversible
impact on how to read Spinoza.
Such an argument is motivated in part by a puzzling state of
affairs: during more than half a century of Spinoza revivaland,
in particular, during approximately four decades in which numer-
ous thinkers, from Althusser to Antonio Negri and beyond, have
elaborated a Spinozist Marxism as an alternative to the dialectical
orthodoxies of Hegelian Marxismremarkably few attempts have
been made to relate Spinoza and Marx to one another in a direct,
explicit, and sustained manner.3 Such a lacuna begs the question
of the foundationsor lack thereofof Spinozist Marxism. It was
partly to begin to redress this lacuna and to formulate this question
that this essay was born. Elsewhere, I have speculated on one pos-
sible way of relating these two thinkers directly to one another by
juxtaposing Marxs theory of surplus value and Spinozas doctrine of
the intellectual love of God that arises from the third kind of knowl-
edge.4 Here I propose to explore the precondition for any possible
juxtaposition between the two, namely, that which makes it possible
even to write about them in the same sentence. As I will argue in
what follows, this precondition consists of the fact that both Marx
and Spinoza need to be understood as early theorists of those cur-
rent and ongoing processes and phenomena to which we now refer
as globalization (and this is an argument that will necessitate also an
engagement with certain aspects of Gilles Deleuzes thought). Given
that the conceit of my claim here is that Marx was the first theorist of
globalization, while Spinoza was the second, I will begin accordingly.
God or Concatenation
In a passage that posits globalization at once (1) as structural and
synchronic precondition (i.e., as immanent cause), (2) as logical and
intrinsic tendency (i.e., as process, that is, as circuit between the
potential and the actual), and (3) as historical and diachronic result
(i.e., as immanent effect) of the capitalist mode of production, Marx
writes:
The creation by capital of absolute surplus value ... is conditional

upon an expansion, specifically a constant expansion, of the sphere
MARX BEFORE SPINOZA 181
of circulation. The surplus value created at one point requires the

creation of surplus value at another point, for which it may be
exchanged.... A precondition of production based on capital is
therefore the production of a constantly widening sphere of circulation,
whether the sphere itself is directly expanded or whether more
points within it are created as points of production. While circulation
appeared at first as a constant magnitude, it here appears as a mov-
ing magnitude being expanded by production itself. Accordingly,
it already appears as a moment of production itself. Hence ...
capital has the tendency ... at bottom, to propagate production
based on capital, or the mode of production corresponding to it.
The tendency to create the world market is directly given in the
concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be
overcome.5
It is a short leap from this passage in the Grundrisse to those pages

in Capital in which Marx will reconstruct and retrace step-by-step
the circular movement at the end of which money emerges
once again as its starting-point,6 namely, the process by which (a
certain amount of ) money is transformed into (money as) capital, the
process by which an original value is turned into surplus-value
through exchange.7 In the context of this discussion, in fact, Marx
articulates the following contrast:
The simple circulation of commoditiesselling in order to buyis

a means to a final goal which lies outside circulation, namely the
appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of needs. As against
this, the circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the
valorization of value takes place only within this constantly re-
newed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless.8
For Marx, capital is the name of a constantly renewed and

ever-expansive movement of exchange relations whose structural
necessity is to envelop the whole planet, as well as to mediate and
relate everything in it, through the production of surplus value. As
Kojin Karatani puts it succinctly in his Architecture as Metaphor, when
commenting on related passages in Capital, the movement of capital
socially connects people from all over the world.
182 C ESAR E CASAR I NO
Crucially, Karatani adds, Yet because this sociality is mediational,

we are not conscious of it. Though we are actually connected to
each other, we are unaware of it.9 In short, the limitless movement
of capital is not immediately available to consciousnessand this
implies that the open-ended totality produced by such a movement
cannot enter the field of representation as such. Such, at any rate, is
the conclusion reached by Fredric Jameson, following from the same
premises. In Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,
for example, Jameson writes:
Structural coordinates are no longer accessible to immediate lived

experience and are often not even conceptualizable for most people.
There comes into being, then, a situation in which we can say
that if individual experience is authentic, then it cannot be true;
and that if a scientific or cognitive model of the same content is
true, then it escapes individual experience.... At this point an
essentially allegorical concept must be introducedthe play of
figurationin order to convey some sense that these new and
enormous global realities are inaccessible to any individual sub-
ject or consciousness ... which is to say that those fundamental
realities are somehow ultimately unrepresentable or, to use the
Althusserian phrase, are something like an absent cause, one that
can never emerge into the presence of perception. Yet this absent
cause can find figures through which to express itself in distorted
and symbolic ways: indeed, one of our basic tasks ... is to track
down and make conceptually available the ultimate realities and
experiences designated by those figures, which the reading mind
inevitably tends to reify and to read as primary contents in their
own right.10
I will leave aside the vexing question of the allegedly allegorical

nature of the conceptnamely, the play of figurationwhich is
introduced here as the solution to the problem of reading the unrepre-
sentable in representation; I would like to focus, rather, on the fact that
in this passage, (1) totality is posited as structure in the Althusserian
sense, namely, as that absent cause immanent in its own effects which
is the mode of production itself, and (2) a clear distinction is made
between (reifying) representation and (dereifying) conceptualization.
Jameson seems to imply that just because that totality which is the
mode of production is not representable as suchor, in any case,
just because this totality may enter the field of representation only in
a necessarily distorted mannerit does not follow that it cannot be
conceptualized or known. Undoubtedly, Jamesons project of cogni-
tive mapping constituted an attempt to address this problem, that
is, the problem of the definitional nonrepresentability of a planetary
totality thus conceived. This means, among other things, that cogni-
tive mapping needs to be understood as having indexed for Jameson
a fundamentally nonrepresentational kind of knowledge all along. In
an admirably candid moment of self-criticism, for example, we read:
What I have called cognitive mapping may be identified as a more

modernist strategy, which retains an impossible concept of totality
whose representational failure seemed for the moment as useful
and productive as its (inconceivable) success. The problem with
this particular slogan clearly lay in its own (representational) acces-
sibility. Since everyone knows what a map is, it would have been
necessary to add that cognitive mapping cannot (at least in our
time) involve anything so easy as a map; indeed, once you knew
what cognitive mapping was driving at, you were to dismiss all
figures of maps and mapping from your mind and try to imagine
something else. But it may be more desirable to take a genealogi-
cal approach and show how mapping has ceased to be achievable
by means of maps themselves.11
Such a genealogical approach, however, is bound to show also

how this type of mapping was never achievable by means of maps
in the first place. The problem with cognitive mapping, according
to Jameson, was not that it was too difficult to conceive, to figure,
to imaginein short, that it was too remote from and inaccessible
to representation. On the contrary, the problem was that it was
not nonrepresentational enough. Indeed, what Jameson retains
and defends in that more modernist strategy which went by the
name of cognitive mapping is only its nonrepresentational kernel,
namely, the impossible concept of totality. (It is precisely by putting
emphasis on such a kernel that Jameson, in a slightly later work
The Geopolitical Aestheticcan eschew any residual representational
connotations in his strategy and can state unequivocally that, when it

comes to a totality, it is always a question of mapping [it] out ...
rather than perceiving or representing [it].)12 But if the strategy of
cognitive mapping was specifically modernist, its nonrepresentational
conceptual kernel, as well as the problem necessitating the latter, was
much older than modernism as such. For if Marx was correct in iden-
tifying such an imperative to totality as directly given in the concept
of capital itself, then the problem of its nonrepresentability, as well
as the attempts to solve this problem (conceptually or otherwise),
ought to be at least as old as capital itselfand hence their genealogy
may be traceable all the way back to the early modern era. This was
an era that, on one hand, witnessed an extraordinary proliferation
of maps and mappings of all sorts and, on the other hand, witnessed
also the fulgurant materialization of an exquisitely mapless mapping.
Baruch Spinoza begins the appendix that ends Ethics I with
a six-point prcis of the preceding arguments regarding God or
substance understood as immanent rather than transitive cause of
itself and of modes.13 This prcis constitutes the springboard from
which Spinoza launches into a trenchant and unsparing critique of
teleological and anthropomorphic thought in all its formsa critique
that comprises the remaining part of the appendix. I am concerned
here neither with the prcis nor with the following critique per se.
I intend to zero in, rather, on the transitional passage that connects
the two. Between a powerful affirmation of absolute immanence
and a radical negation of transcendence in its twin forms of teleol-
ogy and anthropomorphism, Spinoza writes:
Further, whenever an opportunity arose, I have tried to remove

prejudices that could hinder the perception of my demonstra-
tions. But since there still remain many prejudices which have
had, and still have, the power to constitute a major obstacle to
mens understanding of the concatenation of all things as I have
explicated it [rerum concatenationem ..., quo ipsam explicui,...], I
have thought it worth while to summon these [prejudices] to the
court of reason.14
The reason why I have thought it worthwhile to summon this seem-

ingly unremarkable passage to the court of the readers attention is
that it includes an atypical and possibly unique instance of explicit

declaration of intent in the entire Ethics. For in this passageon
which, to my knowledge, nobody ever has remarkedSpinoza
makes it possible to catch a fleeting glimpse not of the signification
but of the significance, not of the meaning but of the sense, of the
Ethics. The sense of the Ethics is expressed here and nowhere else, in
the locution rerum concatenationemthe concatenation of all things
(where, by things, we need to understand all modes of extension
and all modes of thought).15
An excursus on sense is necessary here. The backbone of Spinozas
Ethics consists of a series of propositions. I follow Gilles Deleuzes
account within The Logic of Sense in understanding any proposition
(1) as consisting of four different yet strictly immanent dimensions
or functions, namely, denotation, manifestation, signification, and
sense; (2) as functioning primarily as a continuous relay or loop of
relations among its first three dimensions, which necessitate and
refer to one another ad infinitum; and (3) as positing sense as that
which at once presupposes, enables, and breaks the propositions
otherwise triangular, closed, and self-referential circuit. Of significa-
tion, in particular, Deleuze writes:
Here it is a question of the relation of the word to universal or

general concepts, and of syntactic connections to the implications
of the concept. From the standpoint of signification, we always
consider the elements of the proposition as signifying concep-
tual implications capable of referring to other propositions, which
serve as premises of the first. Signification is defined by this order
of conceptual implication where the proposition under consid-
eration intervenes only as an element of a demonstration, in
the most general sense of the word, that is, either as premise or
as conclusion.16
Sense, on the other hand, is for Deleuze the expressed of the proposi-
tionnamely, that aliquid which is irreducible to individual states
of affairs [i.e., the thing, object, or objects, and relations among
objects, which the proposition denotes], particular images and per-
sonal beliefs [i.e., that which the proposition manifests as the lived
experience of its speaking subject], and universal or general concepts
[i.e., that which the proposition signifies or demonstrates].17 Sense,

in other words, is irreducible not only to the three other functions of
the proposition but also to all that the proposition indexes through
those functions. Importantly, sense does have nonetheless a special
relation to things and to their relationsthat is, to states of affairs
which constitute the indexed object of the propositions first and
denoting function. Of sense, in fact, Deleuze writes:
On the one hand, it does not exist outside the proposition which
expresses it; what is expressed does not exist outside its expres-
sion. This is why we cannot say that sense exists, but rather that
it inheres or subsists. On the other hand, it does not merge at all
with the proposition, for it has an objectness [objectit] which is
quite distinct. What is expressed has no resemblance whatsoever
to the expression. Sense is indeed attributed, but it is not at all the
attribute of the propositionit is rather the attribute of the thing or
state of affairs. The attribute of the proposition is the predicatea
qualitative predicate like green, for example. It is attributed to the
subject of the proposition. But the attribute of the thing is the
verb: to green, for example, or rather the event expressed by this
verb. It is attributed to the thing denoted by the subject, or to the
state of affairs denoted by the entire proposition. Conversely, this
logical attribute does not merge at all with the physical state of
affairs, nor with a quality or relations of this state. The attribute
is not a being and does not qualify a being; it is an extra-being....
Sense is both the expressible or the expressed of the proposition,
and the attribute of the state of affairs. It turns one side towards
things and one side towards propositions. But it does not merge
with the proposition which expresses it any more than with the
state of affairs or the quality which the proposition denotes. It is
exactly the boundary between propositions and things.18
Sense names the impossible point of tangency between les mots et

les choses, the relating nonrelation between the expression of words
and the attribution of things. It might be more accurate, then, to
define the fourth dimension of the proposition as expression rather
than as sense per se. Through expression, the proposition yields its
own impassable threshold onto that which it denotesa threshold
of sense that is also an extra-being, an addition to being, an onto-

logical surplus. At once excessive surplus and unbridgeable abyss,
more than a plus and less than a minus, sense is expressed by the
proposition just like event is attributed to the state of affairs. In both
caseswhich constitute the very same case considered from two dif-
ferent sidessomething occurs that defies yet marks representation:
the virtual sense-event that makes the world go round, that agitates
words and things alike, that makes them both glow from the inside,
thereby surrounding them both from the outside, as it were, with a
halo.19 I will return to these and other luminous passages of The Logic
of Sense. Here I would like to conclude provisionally this excursus
by putting forth the following claim (to which I will return): the first
two dimensions of the proposition (denotation and manifestation)
correspond to the two components of Spinozas first kind of knowl-
edge (i.e., inherently inadequate representational knowledge based
solely on sensory perceptions and semiotic systems), whereas its third
dimension (signification or demonstration) corresponds to Spinozas
second kind of knowledge (i.e., inherently adequate conceptual
knowledge based on common notions), and its fourth dimension
(expression) corresponds to Spinozas third kind of knowledge (i.e.,
inherently adequate intuitive knowledge).20
Let us return now to the Ethics and to the concatenation of all
things. The Ethics is truly a mapless work. First of all, it is notorious
for beginning disorientingly and uncompromisingly in medias res. It
opens without any introductions, abstracts, prefaces, preambles, or
further ado. Rather it catapults the reader amid definitions, axioms,
propositions, demonstrations, explanations, corollaries, lemmata,
and scholia, whose crystalline clarity as discrete elements is directly
proportional to the opacity of the overall project and hence of their
import as integral components of the latter. Moreover, not only
are contextualizing passages, framing devices, orienting signposts,
or expository meta-commentaries absent from the opening pages,
such or other types of direct articulations at once of the driving
force and of the general trajectoryin sum, of the inherent vector
constitutiveof this work are very scarce, if anywhere at all to be
found, throughout the entire course of its theorematic deductions.
(The deductive progression of this work, to be sure, is punctuated by
numerous breaks, caesurae, and excursus, such as, most notably, the
scholia; no matter how insightful and illuminating, however, these

crucial textual nodes arguably do not play the role of metacom-
mentaries and are implicative rather than explicative, that is, they
elaborate the further implications of this works line of reasoning
rather than clarifying why either such a line of reasoning or its im-
plications matter in the first place.21) In short, seldom, if ever, in the
Ethics does Spinoza produce statements indexing directly or explain-
ing explicitly what it is that this work aims to achieve or to express
by demonstrating the series of propositions it does demonstrate,
what it is in the end that is at stake in its various argumentations.
Or, as an exasperated student once put it memorably in class while
trying to make sense of the Ethics, I understand what it says but
I dont understand what it meansa sentence that, ironically, did
not mean what it said, as I took it to mean, rather, that the student
in question understood the signification or meaning of Spinozas
work perfectly well without, however, being able yet to understand
its opaque significance, to grasp its elusive sense.
This is why the preceding quoted passage constitutes a remark-
able anomaly: it contains possibly as direct, explicit, and concise an
encapsulation of the overall project of the Ethics as we will find in
this entire work, as Spinoza indicates there in passing not only what
he is saying and what he means by saying it but also what the sense
of meaning it is in the first place. In this passage, Spinoza expresses
what sense meaning makes as well as presupposes. He writes, quo
ipsam explicui, that is, as I have explicated itwhere the ipsam,
the it, refers to the immediately preceding rerum concatenationem,
the concatenation of all things. But where has Spinoza explicated
such a concatenation? Where has he explained how everything is
interconnected? If one recalls the exact position of this passage in
the text, this question is amenable to only one possible answer: he
has explained it in Ethics I, which the six-point prcis immediately
preceding this passage has just summarized. However, there is no
mention (literal or otherwise) of such a concatenation either in the
prcis or in that which this prcis summarizes. Spinoza, thus, can
mean only one thing here, namely, that what he has demonstrated
in Ethics I is homologous with the concatenation of things. In this
passage, Spinoza states that to demonstrate that God or substance is
the immanent rather than transitive cause of itself and of modes is
tantamount to asserting that all things are concatenated. Given that

the argument regarding God or substance as immanent cause is not
only the main thrust of Ethics I but also constitutes in effect the tran-
scendental precondition of all other arguments and demonstrations
found in the remaining four parts of the Ethics, the concatenation of
things is being posited here as no less than the axiomatic foundation
sustaining the entire theorematic edifice of this work and constituting
the sovereign exception to its logical progression and structure. Deus
seu concatenatio: God or concatenation: such is the pithy postulate of
the Ethics at once being-as-chain and chain of beings, immanent cause
and total relation.22 To help us make sense of such a postulatethat
immanent cause is the concatenation of things by a different name,
that all things are related to one another, and indeed are bound
and chained together, through that which at once brings them into
existence as well as exists only to the extent to which it inheres in
themis precisely Spinozas project in the Ethics.
(Incidentally, it is all the more remarkable and all the more ap-
propriate to find such a fleeting yet crucial metacommentary there
where we might expect least to find it. For it is ensconced in a sub-
ordinate clause. . . , quo ipsam explicui, . . .which is delimited
by commas and dependent on another subordinate clause, which is
dependent on another subordinate clause, which is itself dependent
on yet another subordinate clause, which is dependent on a primary
clause, which is contained within a transitional group of sentences
in the body of an appendix bridging Ethics I and Ethics II.23 There is
nothing particularly exceptional about such syntactical complexity
per se, as it is not uncommon of Latin in general and even of Spi-
nozas fairly clear and relatively uncomplicated Latin in particular.
More to the point, rather, is that Spinoza enacts and embeds this
revealing aside within a fly-over zone of this work, or at any rate,
within an easily overlooked textual enclave, whose primary purpose
is to connect two sets of purportedly more significant sections of
the worknot only Ethics I and Ethics II but also the beginning of
the appendix consisting of the prcis of Ethics I and the rest of the
appendix consisting of the critique of those prejudices that impede
our access to understanding the concatenation of all things. Put
differently, Spinoza posits the articulation of being as chain of things
in a passage that not only signifies this meaning but also performs
it by virtue of its parenthetical yet connective textual location, as it

is positioned ostensibly as a mere link, as it is framed ostentatiously
as no more than a chain in a chain of words.)
If absolute immanence is the ultimate signification and meaning
of the Ethics, concatenation is its ultimate significance and sense. The
Ethics at one stroke demonstrates absolute immanence as concept
and expresses concatenation as sense. More precisely, the propositions
comprising the Ethics at once denote the world as composition of
substance and modes without any remainder, manifest both adequate
and inadequate ways in which the human mode may experience this
world, signify the concept of this world as absolute immanence, and
express the sense of such a world as the concatenation of all things.
And it is at a moment in this work when the denoting, manifesting,
and signifying functions of its propositions are being held momen-
tarily in abeyance that the ubiquitously implicit expressible becomes
expressed, that sense leaves its mark on representation and emerges
hidden in plain sight. What is unique about the passage in question,
in fact, is that here sense is actually materialized and named, here
sense finds its proper and adequate name in concatenation. This
means that concatenation not only names the sense of the Ethics
but also names sense as such. If sense is precisely the impossible
interface between propositions and (their denoted) states of affairs,
the relating nonrelation and conjunctive disjunction between words
and things, then the concatenation of all thingsthat is, of all modes,
including words and thingsis sense par excellence.
Furthermore, as we saw earlier, there is no sense in words without
a corresponding event in things. If concatenation is the expressed
sense of the propositions comprising the Ethics, it is also the attrib-
uted event of that state of affairs that those propositions denote.
Exactly what state and what affairs are these? A state of affairs may
be described as a specific milieu, as a particular organization of
stuff, as a determination of networks of relations among things,
as a configuration of the world as composition of substance and
modes at a certain point in space and timein short, as a histori-
cal conjuncture. The historical conjuncture of the Ethics and of its
author is well known. Here it might be instructive nonetheless to
remind ourselves of a few of the more salient and relevant features
of the world of seventeenth-century Amsterdam.
The ebullient, bustling Stimmung of this brave new world is

captured well by a remark made by the philosopher whose thought
was arguably most influential for Spinoza, namely, Ren Descartes.
Around the time of Spinozas birth in 1632, Descartes writes thus
about Amsterdam, the city in which he spent much of his life: In
this large town in which I live, everyone but myself is engaged in
trade, and hence is so attentive to his own profit that I could live here
all my life without ever being noticed by a soul.24 Unlike Descartes,
Spinoza, for better and for worse, was never to be afforded the luxury
of going unnoticed among and by so many profit-making soulsof
which, for a time, he was one himself. For Spinoza was intimately
acquainted with the ways of profit: he was born and grew up not
only in the enthusiastically mercantile city described by Descartes
and in its merchant-dominated Jewish community but also in a
merchant family whose far-flung importexport business occupied
him assiduously for more than a decade; he frequented regularly the
Amsterdam stock exchange, which had been instituted recently as
the first stock exchange in the world; he lived a stones throw away
from the Amsterdam chamber of the Vereenigde Oostindische
Compagnie, the United East India Company, the spearhead of Dutch
colonialism that had been founded three decades before his birth as
the first joint-stock company in the world (hence as the precursor of
our contemporary multinational corporation), whose first shares,
exchanged in 1606, in effect brought the Amsterdam stock exchange
into existence. (And as fate would have it, yet unsurprisingly, many
a member of the council of Jewish notables that pronounced the
cherem, or excommunication, on Spinoza in 1656, thereby severing
his direct ties to the Jewish community as well as to the nascent
world of capitalist and colonial enterprise for ever after, happened
to be shareholders of the United East India Company.)25 Moreover,
Spinoza was the product of arguably one of the most cosmopolitan
and transnational environments on the globe at the timenot only
the Amsterdam of the heyday of Mercantilism but also its complex,
diasporic, and polyglot Jewish community (at the time composed
of recently immigrated Sephardim, primarily Marranos from the
Iberian Peninsula, often via France, and to a lesser extent, recently
immigrated Ashkenazim, primarily from Germany, Poland, and later
Lithuania), whose members were increasingly connected, through
chiefly mercantile and familial networks, also with many other parts
of the world and especially with the slave-driven economies of the
Black Atlantic (and indeed, Spinozas own personal links to the New
World, and to Brazil and the Caribbean in particular, were various
and intricate).26 One need not exaggerate what emerges from this
picture to characterize such a state of affairs as the emergent inter-
connectivity of everything, under the aegis of capitalist exchange
relations, on a tendentially and increasingly global scale. Rerum
concatenationem indeed ...
Something happened in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. This
something must have been very complex, and hence very difficult to
comprehend, if one is to judge from, among other things, the myriad
volumes that have been and continue to be written about it. If this is
something that, evidently, we cannot put to rest, we may rest assured
that this something cannot put us to rest eithersince it continues
to this day as the very opposite of rest. In short, this something
constitutes an event whose whole is greater than and irreducible
to its parts, an event that is altogether in excess of whatever took
place then and there, an event that at once was the causeeffect of
a specific state of affairs and yet continues to haunt and to inhere as
the causeeffect of our current and ongoing state of affairs, an event
that at once is a product of history and yet does not belong merely in
history (i.e., does not belong fully either to the history that produced
it or to history at all), an event that is not only historical state of af-
fairs but also extra-being or ontological surplus. Concatenation is
the name of this event in the Ethics. Concatenation names at once
a sense of words and an event of things, the sense of the Ethics and
the event of its state of affairs, the sense of its propositions and the
event of the state of affairs those propositions denote. The locution
rerum concatenationem marks virtual sense-event in the Ethics.
This is not at all to conflate, however, the concept of absolute
immanence, and its attendant and constitutive sense-event of con-
catenation, with globalizing capitalism as such. Just because the
movement of capital lays out a plane of immanence by connect-
ing everything and everybody all over the globe, it does not follow
that there is no distinction between capitalism and immanence,
between capitalism and the concatenation of all things. Indeed, to
draw the (at times fashionable, often tendentious, and always facile)
conclusion that, since capitalism and concatenation connect all (the

same) things and share in the same logic (immanent causality), they
must perforce have the same structure and indeed be one and the
same, is not unlike arguing that a diamond, a lump of coal, and a
graphite stick inside a pencilall allotropes of carbonare the same
thing. To put it in more properly Spinozan terms, that there is no
potential that is not also actual, and vice versaone of Spinozas
foundational contentions in the Ethicsdoes not mean either that
there is no distinction of any kind between potentiality and actu-
ality or that there may be exclusively and necessarily one-to-one
correlations between them (in the sense that that which is potential
may manifest itself through one and only one specific mode of ac-
tualization).27 Were such crucial distinctions between potentiality
and actuality not to exist, the Ethics would constitute indeed not
only an explication of the logic that underlies capitalism, among
other things, but also an unabashed affirmation and endorsement
of capitalism as ontological necessity and as ethical imperative tout
court. (It is precisely by misrecognizing these distinctions and their
consequences in Spinoza that Slavoj iek ends up identifying and
denouncing Spinozism as the ideology of late capitalism.)28 In short,
capitalism is only one possible modality of actualization of absolute
immanenceand a relativizing one, at that. Capitalism constitutes
only one possible procedure for concatenating all things, or, which is
to say the same thing, only one possible way of materializing surplus.29
There is ample reason to believe that Spinoza did not take much
stock in capital as the supreme connector of all things. After all,
Spinozas apostatic repudiation of his own milieunot only of its
theological orthodoxies but also of its mercantile cupiditycould
have been hardly more vehement. (Even though we may glean such
repudiation from his writings, all of which date from the period
after the excommunication, it has been argued convincingly that
far from constituting a proverbial instance of sour grapes, Spinozas
disillusionment with and dissociation from his milieu well preceded
and hence was the cause rather than the effect of his excommunica-
tion.)30 On the opening pages of the Treatise on the Emendation of the
Intellect, in an uncharacteristic moment of autobiographical intro-
spection verging on the confessional, Spinoza sketches an unsparing
portrait of the philosopher as a young man, thereby composing his
own bildungsroman. There, while relating the difficulties of his

philosophical apprenticeship, he denounces, with passion and in
detail, the pursuit of that which human beings, if one is to judge
from their actions, regard as the supreme good ... namely, wealth,
rank, and sensual pleasure [libidinem] (and to his credit, he does
not downplay his own initial and considerable resistances to wrest-
ing himself away from such pursuits).31 Later in life, in a letter to
a friend, Spinoza rails against a pamphlet he had happened to read
recently, in which wealth and rank are posited as the supreme good
that must be attained by any means necessary. Spinoza tells his friend
that he found this pamphlet to be the most pernicious work man
could devise or invent and that he considered writing a response in
which he would show the troubled and wretched condition of those
who covet rank and wealth; finally proving, by clear arguments and
many examples, that the insatiable desire for rank and wealth must
bring and has brought ruin to commonwealths.32 Never one to be
captive of the sad passions for too long, Spinoza quickly dispels such
angry indignation toward the end of the letter by fittingly invoking
Thales of Miletus and his belief that, among friends, all things are
in common.33
One may object that there is nothing specifically anticapitalist or
protocommunist about such jeremiads against money, power, and
sex: it could be argued that Spinozas protestations may apply only
or primarily to premodern and precapitalist forms of social rela-
tions and that his views here might be more symptomatic, rather,
of a somewhat sermonizing, censorious, and possibly even sancti-
monious asceticism owing nothing to cognizance of the nefarious
novelties of capitalism as such. All this may be the case to a degree.
And yet matters become more complicated when considering the
exact reasons Spinoza gives for his aversion to the profit-making,
power-seeking ways of his world. In the Treatise on the Emendation
of the Intellect, he also writes:
The acquisition of money, sensual pleasure, and fame is a hindrance

only as long as they are sought on their own account, and not as a
means to other things. If they are sought as means, they will then
be under some restriction, and far from being hindrances, they will
do much to further the end for which they are sought.34
Later, in the appendix to Ethics IV, he reiterates, modifies, and ex-

pands on this point when explaining how human beings need one
anotherand, in particular, how they need to exchange with one
anothernot only to survive but also to live well. Spinoza writes:
But the strength of any one person would hardly be enough to

provide [well-being], unless men exchanged services. Money has
provided a short cut to all these things, as a result of which its
image tends to occupy the mind of the masses [Mentem vulgi] very
much, because they can hardly imagine any kind of happiness
unless it is accompanied by the idea of money as its cause. But
this is a fault only of those who seek money, not out of poverty
or on account of the necessities of life, but because they have
learned the arts of profit [lucri artes], whereby they boast most
pompously and arrogantly.... But those who know the true use
of money, and limit their wealth simply to what they need, live
content with little.
In these two passages, Spinoza is making a crucial distinction be-

tween money as a means to the satisfaction of needs and money as
an end unto itself, between, on one hand, money in its exclusively
instrumentaland hence limited and limitingfunction of medium
of exchange and circulation and, on the other hand, money in its
limitless, self-referential, self-reproducing, surplus function. Whereas
he looks on the former favorablynot only because it facilitates and
expedites the process of bringing human beings together in common
welfare and in commonwealth but also because it is strictly limited
by and subordinate to the satisfaction of needshe condemns the
latter precisely because there is no limit to it and hence is bound to
run amok, to become the sole telos of exchange, to elevate itself
above, subjugate, and bring ruin to the human commonwealth.
In short, Spinoza identifies here the difference between money
(as medium of exchange) and (money as) capital. In such scathing
denunciations of the insatiable desire for ... wealth, the empha-
sis is placed squarely on the insatiabilitynamely, on the limitless
characterof this desire even more than on the desire per se: it is
precisely in such a drive to limitlessness that Spinoza discerns the
disastrous, alchemic metamorphosis of money into capital. Spinozas
critique here is already a critique of capitalism, or at the very least, a

critique of that always already latent capitalist tendency intrinsic in
older forms (and, indeed, in all forms) of mercantile exchange and
circulationa tendency that in his own time was fully emergent, as
it was beginning to engulf the globe in its totality and to turn the
globe into a totality. No wonder, then, that Spinozas words echo
uncannily in much that Marx has to say on these matters, and espe-
cially in the passages quoted at the beginning of this essay. Here is,
once again, Marx in Capital:
The simple circulation of commoditiesselling in order to buyis

a means to a final goal which lies outside circulation, namely the
appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of needs. As against
this, the circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the
valorization of value takes place only within this constantly re-
newed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless.35
My point is not that Marx had read Spinoza: we know that he had
(as well as that he had done so largely through the tendentious
lens of Hegels interpretation).36 The point, rather, is that here, in
grappling with the same problematic, Marx and Spinoza share and
converge in a common philosophical discourse, namely, the Aristo-
telian tradition. At the end of the preceding passage, Marx appends
a detailed and appreciative footnote on Aristotles forays into the
realm of the economic, found in Book I of his Politics. In wordsand,
more important, according to a logicthat are barely distinguish-
able from Spinozas own, Aristotle there famously contrasts two
related yet crucially different arts, namely, oikonoma (economics)
and chrematistik (chrematistics), both of which involve the art of
acquisition and hence exchange. Economics is the art of managing
a household, namely, the natural art of acquisition which is prac-
ticed by managers of households and by statesmen. For Aristotle,
economics is necessary and limited, in the sense that there is a limit
to the number of things to be acquired that are necessary to life,
and useful for the community of the family or state. Such things
are the element of true riches; for the amount of property which
is needed for a good life is not unlimited. By contrast, chrematistics
is the art of acquiring wealth simply for the sake of acquiring wealth.
For Aristotle, chrematistics is unnecessary and unlimited, in the

sense that there is no limit to how much wealth can be acquired
and that such unlimited acquisition of wealth is not necessary for
the management of the household. If these two arts often are con-
fused for one another or thought to be one and the same, Aristotle
argues, that is because the measure and the unit of exchange is
the same in both, namely, money. Each of these arts, he writes, is
a use of the same property, but with a difference: whereas the telos
of economics is the satisfaction of needs by exchanging money for
things or services, the telos of chrematistics is accumulation of
moneywhich is why those who confuse the latter for the former
think that the whole idea of their lives is that they ought either to
increase their money without limit, or at any rate not to lose it.37
(Importantly, and unsurprisingly, even more blistering is Aristotles
indictment of usury as the most extreme and most unnatural
form of chrematistics because the natural object of money is to
be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest.)38 Aside from
all the numerous terminological as well as conceptual resonances
with Spinoza, it should be noted also that when, in the passage
quoted from the appendix to Ethics IV, Spinoza refers to the arts
of profit (as distinct from seeking money because of poverty or to
satisfy needs), he uses a locutionlucri artesthat is as adequate a
Latin rendition as any of the Aristotelian chrematistik. Moreover,
such unmistakably Aristotelian echoes in Spinoza are all the more
significant if one considers that Spinoza, even though well versed in
the Aristotelian and Scholastic traditions, not only did not revere such
traditions as dogma but also was at times very critical of them, and
even went as far as declaring that Aristotles authority carried little
weight with him.39 In short, here Spinoza and Marx seize and build
specifically on that most prescient aspect of Aristotles thought that
senses (as well as sketches the main contours of ) an incipient logic
of unbridled growth that is the very logic of capitalism. Spinoza and
Marx derive at least two fundamental insights into the realm of the
economic from Aristotle, namely, the distinction between money as
means of exchange and money as end of exchange, as well as the
distinction between the limited circulation of the former and the
limitless circulation of the latter.
It is precisely the latter that Marx does not hesitate to call God.40
In the Grundrissewhose first chapter constitutes a detailed and

complex analytic of moneyMarx understands money as having
three semiautonomous and at times simultaneous functions: money
as measure of value, money as medium of exchange and circulation,
and money as money. This last, however, is more precisely defined as
the interaction of two mutually determining and mutually negating
functions: money as money, namely, money as the general form
of wealth, and money as capital, namely, money as the material
representative of general wealth.41 In its Janus-headed third function,
money sublates the other two and exceeds the process of precapital-
ist circulation to become the modern, independent, general form of
wealth. It is of such a veritable transcendence-in-immanence that
Marx writes:
From its servile role, in which it appears as mere medium of

circulation, [money] suddenly changes into the lord and god of
commodities. It represents the divine existence of commodities,
while they represent its earthly form.42
Marx does not elaborate his divine metaphor any further, and hence
it is impossible to ascertain exactly what (definition of ) God he has
in mind here. Such a double articulation of money in its third and
properly capitalist function (namely, money-as-commodities and
commodities-as-money, exchange value as use values and use val-
ues as exchange value, the One as the All and the All as the One),
however, does bear more than a passing resemblance to the relation
between substance and modes in Spinoza: it is them and they are
iteach morphologically different. More important, in the next
paragraph, Marx writes:
Monetary greed, or mania for wealth, necessarily brings with it the

decline and fall of the ancient communities [Gemeinwesen]. Hence
it is the antithesis to them. It is itself the community [Gemeinwesen],
and can tolerate none other standing above it. But this presupposes
the full development of exchange values, hence a corresponding
organization of society. In antiquity, exchange value was not the
nexus rerum [nexus of all things]; it appears as such only among
the mercantile peoples [whether in antiquity, in the Middle Ages,
or later], who had, however, no more than a carrying trade and

did not, themselves, produce.43
The complexity of the relation between Marx and Spinoza is cap-

tured exemplarily and in the highest degree by the asymmetrical
correspondences between the uncannily similar yet crucially different
locutions nexus rerum and rerum concatenationem. If, earlier, Marx had
compared money in its third function to God, here he explains that
in mercantile societies, such a God appearsat once comes into
being, emerges into visibility, and hence enters the field of representa-
tionas the nexus of all things. What Spinoza discovered implicitly
and Marx rediscovered explicitly, and what Aristotle was not in a
position even to imagine, is that in money-as-capital, all things are
bound together, that capital is a form of the nexus of all things, that
capital at once materializes and usurps God as concatenation of all
thingsin short, that capital makes it possible to think the ontologi-
cal function of God as absolute immanence (thereby also making
it difficult yet all the more urgent to distinguish between itself and
absolute immanence as such). The unthinkable for antiquity is not
exactly capital per se: we have seen how Aristotlewho is well ac-
quainted with the mercantile milieuanticipates and denounces the
structural and definitional features of capital in and as chrematistik.
(Hence, Marx writes, the wailing of the ancients about money
as the source of all evils.44) The unthinkable for antiquity, rather, is
that the realm of exchange and the realm of metaphysics, that the
realm of the economic and the realm of the ontological, could have
anything at all to do with one anotherlet alone overlap to the point
of indiscernibility.45 Such an overlap, thus, might be as good a name
as any for modernity itself: distinct yet indiscernible, such are the
economic and the ontological in and after modernity.
Yet Spinozas rerum concatenationem is not exactly one and the
same with Marxs nexus rerum. Whereas the former constitutes the
sense-event that, on one hand, corresponds explicitly to the concept of
absolute immanence and, on the other hand, corresponds implicitly
to the state of affairs of emergent capitalist globalization, the latter
constitutes the sense-event corresponding explicitly to both. Or as
Marx puts it in the passage from Capital quoted at the beginning of
this essay, the tendency to create the world market is directly given
in the concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be

overcome.46 Spinoza does state, in effect, that the concatenation of
all things is directly given in the concept of absolute immanence.
Spinoza does understand also the concept of capital as well as its
attendant and constitutive logic of limitlessness. If he does not con-
nect explicitly these two distinct lines of reasoning and hence does
not articulate these two distinct components of his thought into one
explicit conceptual constellationthereby closing the circuit that will
remain open up until Marxit is because of historical factors rather
than conceptual inadequacies. Marx elucidates such factors well by
pointing out in the passage quoted earlier that even though in all
mercantile societies, money already appears in its properly capitalist
function and hence as nexus rerum, such societies nonetheless are not
yet organized accordingly, in the sense that they have not achieved
the full development of exchange values because they do not,
themselves, produce but engage in commercial exchange only. Obvi-
ously, Marx is not saying that there is no production of any kind in
mercantile societies; rather it is production of a very specific kind
he has in mind here. On the same page, he writes:
It is inherent in the simple character of money itself that it can

exist as a developed moment of production only where and when
wage labour exists; that in this case, far from subverting the so-
cial formation, it is rather a condition for its development and a
driving-wheel for the development of all forces of production,
material and mental.47
The full development of exchange values and its corresponding

organization of societynamely, the new social formation that
emerges from the ruins of ancient commonwealths, much like the
phoenix rising from its own ashescan take place only in the pres-
ence of modern industrial production based on the wage, which is
the kind of production mercantile societies do not have. And in fact,
in the immediately following paragraph, Marx refers to seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century Mercantilism proper as the age that precedes
the development of modern industrial society.48 The point, in other
words, is that in the mercantile society Spinoza knows and understands
so well, on one hand, money appears already in its capitalist form of
nexus rerum and, on the other hand, money is not yet really fully the
nexus rerum (i.e., its potential as nexus rerum is not yet completely actu-
alized) because such a society does not function and is not organized
according to wage relations.49 It is this historical as well as ontological
discrepancy between a potential and its specific mode of actualiza-
tion that leads Spinoza to conceive of absolute immanence as rerum
concatenationem separately from what was at the time its emergent
manifestation as well as its conceptual condition of possibilityin
short, separately from what was its cause-effect, namely, globalizing
capitalism. But it is also such a discrepancy that enables Spinoza to
denounce globalizing capitalism without, for this reason, having to
throw out the ontological baby with the economic bathwater, that
is, without having thus to humiliate absolute immanence as such by
denigrating it or retranscendentalizing it. Arguably, since Spinoza,
most attempts to critique capitalism have misrecognized the latter
as being one and the same with immanence itself and hence have
ended up critiquing immanence tout court. Hence the wailing of
the moderns and the postmodernsand especially of the bureau-
crats of the dialecticabout immanence as the source of all evils.
It is hereon the plane of immanencethat Marx and Spinoza
meet. (Their meeting, thus, is not unlike the infinitely repeated yet
always impossible rendezvous between the man and the woman
in Alain Resnaiss LAnne dernire Marienbadwith Aristotle un-
doubtedly cast in the role of the jealous husband.) Marx is the first to
discover in the concept of capital that tendency toward the world market
thatthough not yet fully actual in his own time, let alone in Spinozas
timeconstitutes nonetheless the condition of possibility of Spinozas
discovery of that ontological connectivity given in the concept of absolute
immanence that manifests itself first and foremost as the very tendency
toward the world market Marx discovers in the concept of capital in the
first place. Put differently, Marxs nexus rerum constitutes the tran-
scendental precondition of Spinozas rerum concatenationem. To posit
thus Marx before Spinozanamely, to posit Marx as logically prior
to Spinozaconstitutes the prolegomena to any future attempt to
think these two thinkers together and in common, to think them as
sharing not only in common philosophical and political traditions,
genealogies, and discourses but also in common philosophical and
political possibilities and projects.
On Globalization as Unconscious
If it is the case, thus, that the first and mercantile modality of capital-
ism becomes legible and intelligible as such in its second and indus-
trial modality, it is also the case that the current, third, fully global,
and communicative modality of capitalism may be found encrypted
already in the first one to begin with.50 We have come back full circle
here to the contemporary JamesonianAlthusserian question that
opened this essayundoubtedly itself a question enabled and neces-
sitated by this third modality of capitalism. This is the questionor
rather the twin questionsof the inaccessibility by consciousness
and in representation, as well as of the purported accessibility by
nonrepresentational kinds of knowledge, of that totality that is the
capitalist mode of production intended as absent cause immanent in
its own effects. It is specifically from the standpoint of this question
that I would like now to return to Spinozas rerum concatenationem.
And I would like to return first of all to the verb of which this locu-
tion from the appendix to Ethics I is the direct object: rerum concat-
enationem . . . quo ipsam explicuithe concatenation of all things
as I have explicated it. The verb explicareliterally, to unfold,
and hence to explicate or to explainis hardly an innocent term in
Spinoza. In Expressionism in Philosophy, Deleuze has shown how this
verb acquires a particularly charged significance for Spinoza as early
as the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.51 More important,
Deleuze has shown how in Spinoza, not only explicare functions in
tandem with another verb, involvereliterally, to envelop, and hence
to involve or to implicatebut also how both are to be understood
as the correlates that accompany and further specify the idea of
expression.52 To explicate or explain and to involve or implicate are
the two complementary functions of expression.53
Before proceeding any further, let me take note of several inter-
related matters. First of all, both as a term and as a concept, expression,
as is well known, constitutes the foundation of Deleuzes epochal
interpretation of Spinozas thought in Expressionism in Philosophy.
This is an interpretation that starts from and returns over and again
to a detailed explication of a crucial passage in the Ethics (as well as
of its resonances and ramifications throughout the entire Spinozan
opus), namely, Ethics I, D6: By God I understand an absolutely
infinite entity, that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes,

each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. (And for our
present purposes, it might be useful also to draw attention to at least
two of this passages reverberations, i.e., Ethics I, P25C, in which we
read that particular things are nothing other than the affections, i.e.
the modes, of the attributes of God, by which the attributes of God
are expressed in a certain and determinate way, and Ethics I, P36Pr.,
in which we read that whatever exists expresses the nature, i.e. the
essence, of God in a certain and determinate way.) Deleuzes inter-
pretation of Spinoza, in other words, arises and develops from the
fundamental insight that in this thinker expression is a certain way
of being, a certain ontological operation or process, that appertains
both to substance and to modes, that connects them via the attributes,
and that also has important epistemological implications (since for
Spinoza, after all, an ideation of any kind is a mode too, specifically, a
mode of thought). Second, however, we have encountered expression
already in another context. Earlier, I showed that when Deleuze, in
The Logic of Sense, articulates sense as the expressed or expressible of
the proposition, he, in effect, posits expression there as the fourth and
foundational function of the proposition constituting the cause-effect
of the other three (namely, denotation, manifestation, signification).
At that point, I also associated expression with Spinozas third kind of
knowledge, for reasons that will become manifest presently. Third,
I believe that these two Deleuzian articulations of expression have
very much in common. Even though Deleuze mentions Spinoza
only once (and in passing) in The Logic of Sense, this work explains
what is at stake in the (Spinozan) concept of expression in more
direct, explicit, and possibly also more trenchant ways than much of
what we read in Expressionism in Philosophy.54 I am arguing, in other
words, that in some important ways, The Logic of Sense explicates
Expressionism in Philosophy (which had appeared one year earlier).
Fourth, and for our present purposes, most important, as I will try
to show in what follows, Deleuzes understanding of expression, in
its various modulations across these two seminal works, is crucial
for an interpretation of Spinoza as theorist of globalizationand
hence another excursus is necessary here, starting from the relation
between explication and expression and ending with the relation
between expression and representation.
If explication is literally an unfolding of that which expresses

itselffor example, an unfolding of substance as it expresses itself
in its modes via its attributesexactly what is it, then, to explicate
something? What is involved and implied in explication? What am I
and what am I doing, how do I think and how do I know, when I ex-
plicate something? In Expressionism in Philosophy, Deleuze writes:
One cannot reduce expression to the mere explication of under-

standing.... For explication, far from amounting to the operation
of an understanding that remains outside its object, amounts
primarily to the objects own evolution, its very life.... Rather
than expression being comprehensible in terms of explication,
explication in Spinoza ... seems to me to depend on some idea of
expression.... It is expression that underlies the relation of under-
standing between thought and object, rather than the reverse.55
Later in the same work, Deleuze adds:
Expressions are always explications. But the explications of the under-

standing are only perceptions. It is not understanding that explicates
substance, but the explications of substance refer necessarily to an
understanding that understands them.56
The onto-epistemological implications of such a conception of the

relation between explication and expression are radical and manifold.
First, there is no breathing room for the egoand for its narcissistic
mirages, specular projections, and imaginary identificationswithin
the ceaseless explicative unfoldings and implicative foldings of expres-
sion. It turns out that whenever I explicate somethingthat is, if and
when I really do soI am not I. In explication, I am, act, think, and
know as other than I, that is, as Other.57 What a subject may think of
as its own explicative understanding of an object is part and parcel of
that object: it is, more precisely, that part of the objectthat func-
tion in its very lifethat not only refers to but also involves and
envelops the subject in the first place. (Undoubtedly, this is another
way of saying that so-called subjects and so-called objects are all
modes sharing in a common substance that determines both just as
it is determined by them.) In short, unlike other, more instrumental,
and indeed more Cartesian ways of being and acting, of thinking

and knowing, a subjects explication of an object is never a property
of that subjectand I do mean property here both as quality and as
ownershipand hence is never a conquest, mastery, or possession
of that object.58 It is, rather, a feature and a capacity of the object
itself. Indeed, in a later commentary on Spinoza, Deleuze puts it
even more tersely:
[Explication in Spinoza] does not signify an operation of the intel-

lect external to the thing, but an operation of the thing internal
to the intellect. Even demonstrations are said to be eyes of the
mind, meaning that they perceive a movement that is in the thing.
Explication is always a self-explication, a development, an unfold-
ing, a dynamism: the thing explains itself.59
I explicate the thing only to the extent to which the thing unfolds and
explains itself in methereby involving, implicating, and binding
us both in a mutually transformative amplexus. The term dynamism
in this passage indicates what is at stake in Deleuzes formulations:
explication is an operation of dynamisthe term in Aristotles Meta-
physics that is commonly translated as potentiality. Explication,
thus, is an activation of potentiality (in the thing as well as in me).
A contingent encounter takes place, say, between the thing and me,
such that the things capacity to affect me and my capacity to be
affected by the thing are activated in such a way that we both turn
into something other than what we were prior to our encounter in
the first placeand thus contingency turns into (shared, mutual)
necessity. Explication constitutes that function of expression that
may be described as interference and metamorphosis through com-
mon dynamis. In explication, expression is revealed as an absolutely
impersonal and nonanthropomorphic operation of being and act-
ing, thinking and knowing, that concerns and involves that which
is potential in substance and in modes.60
Second, all the preceding indicate that something takes place in
expression (including in its function of explication) which escapes
representation and on which, however, representation feeds and is
founded. According to Deleuze, what we think of typically as the
explications of our understanding are indeed explicationsbut not of
our understanding! Though they certainly involve our understanding

if and when they are understood by it, they are of substance and of
modes other than us and hence not of our understanding (which is
to say that they are not generated in our intellectual faculties and
processes). When strictly of our understanding, in other words,
explications are not explications at all: they are, rather, nothing
more and nothing less than perceptions, namely, our representa-
tional modes of thinking and knowing that which explicates itself
in us. In short, explication is not limited to those operations of the
intellect that it does involve and that Spinoza designates as the first
kind of knowledge (i.e., representational knowledge based solely
on sensory perceptions and semiotic systems). Explication always
involves representation yet is not defined and exhausted by it. This
is all the more so for expression, if it is the case, as Deleuze main-
tains, that expression is what any explication depends on as well as
what underlies the relation of understanding between thought and
object, rather than the reverse.61 In short, expressionin its twin
functions of explication and implication, folding and unfolding
enables any representational form of thought and knowledge. Ex-
pression constitutes that immanent ground of representation that
representation itself cannot represent by definition. Here, in other
words, I am reaching through a different procedure the same conclu-
sions I reached earlier, namely, that expression always concerns that
which is potential in substance as well as in modes: potentiality qua
potentiality, in fact, cannot enter the field of representation even as
it makes itself felt there; potentiality qua potentiality constitutes the
unrepresentable absolute.
The somewhat tacit primacy of expression over representation
in Expressionism in Philosophy is pushed to its logical conclusions as
well as brought to the fore in an illuminating passage of The Logic
of Sense. There, while discussing the concept of representation in
Stoic philosophy, Deleuze explains how the Stoics, even though
they differentiated between sensible representations and rational
representations, conceived of both as corporeal, that is, as imprints
that bodies leave on bodies.62 Such corporeal imprints, however, are
themselves determined by something incorporeal, namely, by virtual
sense-event. Deleuze writes:
Sensible representations are denotations and rational representa-

tions are significations, while only incorporeal events constitute
expressed sense. We have encountered this difference of nature
between the expression and the representation at every turn,
each time we noted the specificity of sense or of the event, its
irreducibility to the denotatum and to the signified, its neutrality
in relation to the particular and to the general, or its impersonal
and pre-individual singularity.... But, if sense is never an object
of possible representation, it does not for this reason intervene any
less in representation as that which confers a very special value to
the relation that it maintains with its object.
By itself, representation is given up to an extrinsic relation of
resemblance or similitude only. But its internal character, by which
it is intrinsically distinct, adequate, or comprehensive, comes
from the manner in which it encompasses, or envelops an expres-
sion, much as it may not be able to represent it. ... For example,
the perception of death as a state of affairs and as a quality, or the
concept mortal as a predicate of signification, remain extrinsic
(deprived of sense) as long as they do not encompass the event
of dying as that which is actualized in the one and expressed in
the other. Representation must encompass an expression which
it does not represent, but without which it itself would not be
comprehensive, and would have truth only by chance or from
the outside. To know that we are mortal is an apodeictic knowl-
edge, albeit empty and abstract; effective and successive deaths
do not suffice of course in fulfilling this knowledge adequately, so
long as one does not come to know death as an impersonal event
provided with an always open problematic structure (where and
when?). In fact, two types of knowledge (savoir) have often been
distinguished, one indifferent, remaining external to its object,
and the other concrete, seeking its object wherever it is. Repre-
sentation attains this topical ideal only by means of the hidden
expression which it encompasses, that is, by means of the event it
envelops. There is thus a use of representation, without which
representation would remain lifeless and senseless. Wittgenstein
and his disciples are right to define meaning by means of use. But
such use is not defined through a function of representation in
relation to the represented, nor even through representativeness

as the form of possibility. Here, as elsewhere, the functional is
transcended in the direction of a topology, and use is in the rela-
tion between representation and something extra-representative,
a nonrepresented and merely expressed entity. Representation
envelops the event in another nature, it envelops it at its borders,
it stretches until this point, and it brings about this lining or hem.
This is an operation which defines living usage, to the extent that
representation, when it does not reach this point, remains only a
dead letter confronting that which it represents, and stupid in its
representativeness.63
It is in this formidable passage above all that The Logic of Sense ex-
plicates a crucial aspect of Expressionism in Philosophy. This passage
reveals how Deleuzes singularly daring, original, and fruitful herme-
neutical wager in Expressionism in Philosophynamely, his having
spun a reinterpretation of Spinozas entire philosophical system out
of the single term and concept of expressionhad been designed
to yield a twofold result. On one hand, in producing the (Spinozan)
concept of expression, this work had aimed to offer a forceful critique
of the (Platonic) concept of representation, namely, that mimetic
modality of representation that entertains only an extrinsic relation
of resemblance with its object, thereby positing (the Idea of ) the
latter as the original and positing itself as its more or less faithful
copy. On the other hand, expression in this work had been put forth
not as an alternative to representation, which then would have to
be discarded or dismissed altogether, but, on the contrary, as an at-
tempt to salvage representation in extremis by rescuing it from the
long history of its Platonic determinations and by refounding it on
nonmimetic grounds: the concept of expression had been devised
to show that a whole other world of representation is possible, in
which representation would entertain intrinsic relations to its object
such that it would let itself be marked by something unrepresentable
in the object, such that it would let itself be shaped by the objects
immanent potential (rather than by its transcendent Idea). This pas-
sage in The Logic of Sense indicates that Expressionism in Philosophy had
posited expression as that which enables representation to represent
the object not as it is (i.e., in its likeness) but as it could be (i.e., in its
capability to be different from what it is). And hence these two works
taken together argue in effect (1) that expression is to representa-
tion what potentiality is to actuality (and hence that their relation
is one of mutual immanence without any remainder) and (2) that
representation may relate to the expression it always encompasses
in two radically different kinds of ways: either by negating it in
mimesis (i.e., by foreclosing it altogether, thereby remaining life-
less and senseless, empty and abstract) or by affirming it (i.e., by
acknowledging it as cause, thereby deriving life and sense from it).
For Deleuze, not all representation is mimesis, and mimesis, rather, is
what representation becomes when alienated from (its appertaining)
expression. For Deleuze, as much as for Spinoza, it is never a ques-
tion of circumventing or destroying representation altogether. It is,
rather, a more complex and more delicate question of distinguishing
among different modalities as well as usages of representation on the
basis of the different procedures according to which such modali-
ties and such usages give certain, determinate, actual form to the
expression of potentiality; it is a question of differentiating among
the modalities and usages of representation on the basis of the vari-
ous procedures according to which they let themselves be formed,
imprinted, altered, and guided by potentiality as it implicates and
explicates itself, folds and unfolds itself in us all. For both thinkers, it
is ultimately a question of reading or mapping the unrepresentable
contractions and dilations of being in representation: it is, in short,
a question of making sense.
We can return now to Spinozas locutionthe concatenation of
all things as I have explicated itand reconsider it from the vantage
point of such a theorization of expression. First of all, in this locution,
Spinoza is invoking a strictly impersonal and nonanthropomorphic
operation of being and acting, thinking and knowing: the object of
concatenation explains itself here in the grammatical subject that
comprehends it; put differently, the concatenation of all things be-
longs to the order of those phenomena which can be understood and
explained by that mode we call the I only to the extent to which the
latter is able to make sense of how such a concatenation explicates
itself in it, thereby involving it and transforming it irreparably in the
first place. The verb explicare indicates that there is no I witnessing
the radically transformative encounter taking place here with such
a concatenation or that, if there is an I here, that is so to the extent

to which I emerge from that encounter and am constituted by the
concatenation of all things. I exist only ex post facto: I come into being
only after and as a by-product of concatenation. If there is any mode
at all here to which we may refer as subject and as object, that is so
to the extent to which expression has already done its job because it
underlies the relation of understanding between thought and object,
rather than the reverse.64 If such an interpretation of Spinozas use
of the verb explicare here seems far-fetched, consider the nature of
those prejudices that, according to Spinoza, have had, and still have,
the power to constitute a major obstacle to mens understanding of
the concatenation of all things as I have explicated it and that he
proceeds to critique systematically and mercilessly in the remaining
pages of the appendix to Ethics I. Immediately following the passage
in question, Spinoza writes:
All the prejudices that I undertake to point out here depend on

one fact: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act
on account of an end, as they themselves do. Indeed they think it
certain that God himself directs all things towards a certain end,
for they say that God has made everything on account of man,
and man in order that he might worship God.
Spinoza is unequivocal here: it is impossible to understand the

concatenation of all thingswhich is to say that it is impossible
to make real sense of such a concatenation as it expresses itself in
usunless we abnegate all anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, and
hence teleological common sense.
Moreover, the verb explicare indicates also that when confronted
with the concatenation of all things, representation fails, is inadequate,
does not suffice by itself. Put obversely, concatenation cannot be
merely represented and needs also to be explicated. In short, concat-
enation operates at the level of expression, and it is only there that
it may be found, understood, and made sense ofwhich is what I
meant earlier when I suggested that the locution rerum concatenationem
constitutes virtual sense-event that defies yet marks representation in
the Ethics. But let us put this in more specifically Spinozan terms. The
concatenation of all things cannot be grasped adequately through the
first kind of knowledge, namely, that assemblage of representational

knowledge based solely on sensory perceptions and semiotic systems,
which, importantly, Spinoza refers to also as imagination and opin-
ion (Ethics II, P40S2). Concatenation cannot be understood fully and
distinctly by relying only on the sensorium and its perceptions and
images, on the power of the imaginary and its egocentric fantasies,
on signs taken for wonders, on common sense or doxa. Having said
that, however, one would have to add that to state that the first kind
of knowledge fails when faced with the concatenation of all things
is not saying much yet because for Spinoza failure is constitutive of
this kind of knowledge. The onto-epistemological processes com-
prising representational knowledge are always inherently inadequate
by definition: they are, in Spinozas words, vague, mutilated,
confused (Ethics II, P40S2)which is also to say, however, that
they are never completely inaccurate or absolutely false because for
Spinoza the false consists in privation of knowledge and hence can
never be absolute, while only truth is absolute by definition. In short,
for Spinoza, representation always fails and never fails absolutely.
The concatenation of all things, however, constitutes not only
a failure of representation but also a failure of reason. For Spinoza,
the second kind of knowledge or reason is based on common
notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things (Ethics II,
P40S2). These are the ideas or concepts that two or more things have
in common, including those ideas ... which are common to all hu-
man beings (Ethics II, P37), because for Spinoza, all things agree in
certain, determinate respects, and hence all things have something
actually in common (cf. at least Ethics II, L2, L2Pr.). (As I will point
out, however, there is a world of difference between having in com-
mon and being in common, as the former pertains only to actuality,
whereas the latter pertains also to potentiality.) For Spinoza, that
reason by definition is founded on adequate modes of thought has
numerous momentous consequences such as, for example, that
reason is conceptual rather than representational65 as well as that it
is necessarily true and indeed teaches us to distinguish the true
from the false (Ethics II, P40S2). And yet, even though Spinoza
clearly holds reason intended as conceptual knowledge in very high
regard, he intimates nonetheless that such knowledge is able to un-
derstand the concatenation of all things only by translating it, as it
were, into a different language that retains its signification yet loses
all its significance in the process: reason is able to come to terms
with concatenation not as (expressed) sense but only as (signified)
concept. As you will recall, Spinoza states that he has explicated the
concatenation of all things there where in fact he had done nothing
of the sort, or, rather, there where he had done something quite
different, albeit related, namely, demonstrating the corresponding
concept of absolute immanence. Reason can signify, demonstrate,
and produce concepts but cannot make sense. And without sense,
conceptual knowledge remains as lifeless, empty and abstract
as representational knowledge: from the standpoint of sense-event
and expression, there is no difference at all between the first and
the second kinds of knowledge (because they both engage with
substance and modes only at the level of the actual).66 In short, I
am suggesting that the concatenation of all things can neither be
denoted or manifested as actual representation by the first kind of
knowledge nor signified or demonstrated as actual concept by the
second kind of knowledge and that, rather, it can be only expressed
as virtual sense-event by the third kind of knowledge, by intuitive
knowledge. Moreover, I am also suggesting that it is precisely to make
sense of concatenation that Spinoza finds it necessary to conceive of
an intuitive knowledge that would comprehend yet also go beyond
the capabilities of both conceptual knowledge and representational
knowledge.67 The concatenation of all things constitutes the raison
dtre of intuitive knowledge.
Genevieve Lloyd has encapsulated the interlocking assemblage
of the three kinds of knowledge in an admirably succinct and clear
manner:
The first way of knowing is focused on singular things, but is

inherently inadequate. The second is inherently adequate, but un-
able to grasp the essence of singular things. The third and highest
kind of knowledge is inherently adequate and able to understand
singular things.68
Lloyd is implying that the reason why intuitive knowledge is indis-

pensable, even though conceptual knowledge is just as adequate
and truthful in and of itself (cf. Ethics II, P41, P42), is that these two
kinds of knowledge have radically different aims or ends: whereas

conceptual knowledge is concerned with that which things actually
have in common, intuitive knowledge is concerned with the essence
of things, namely, with that which makes things singular and which,
thus, cannot be had or shared in common by definition. (It is crucial
to note that Spinozas concept of essence is a strictly nonessentialist
and immanentist one: a singular essence is inherent and appertains
to each mode as well as to substance, whose essence, unlike modal
essences, is one and the same with its existence and hence is to
exist necessarily [see Ethics I, P20; cf. also n. 84]. In short, no two
essences can be shared or can be alike.)69 More specifically, Spinoza
states that intuitive knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of
the formal essence of some of the attributes of God to an adequate
knowledge of the essence of things (Ethics II, P40S2). As Lloyd ac-
curately notes, the definitional object or end of intuitive knowledge is
indeed the essence of things. It seems to me, though, that here it is
a question not only of its object but also of its onto-epistemological
procedure: what is so indispensable and unique about the third kind
of knowledge is not only its end but also its means. The meansthat
is, the route that is to be followed to approach and to achieve such
an endare just as crucial as the end itself: to conceive of modal
essence, this kind of knowledge proceeds, in effect, from the es-
sence of substance; to be known adequately, in other words, modal
essence needs to be deduced from the essence of substance. Intuitive
knowledge entails not only understanding that aliquid, that certain
something, that makes each and every thing singularly what it is
but also, and crucially, understanding such aliquid by starting from
that which necessarily exists in the thing, which is not its essence
but the essence of substance. Through a deductive procedure, such
knowledge produces a link between the essence of substance and the
essence of modes: it reaches and comprehends the singular essence
of each and every thing by linking it to the essence of substance
that is immanent yet irreducible to it. In short, it is at one stroke
that intuitive knowledge understands modal essence and links it to
the essence of substanceand hence that understanding and that
linking may no longer be distinguished from one another. This is
tantamount to saying that intuitive knowledge conceives of modal
essence in and as the link to the essence of substance: modal essence
is the link between itself and that which causes all modes to exist as
linked to one another. It turns out that that which is most singular
about each and every thing derives from and consists in precisely
its being a link to the link of all links, namely, nexus rerum or rerum
concatenationem. That which is most singular in us all is the manner
in which we relate tothat is, the way in which we liveour being
embedded in and constituted by the concatenation of all things.
Concatenation is not the taking place of the common, if the latter
is intended as the network of relations interwoven by the common
notions, namely, by the actual concepts of those actual things that
we have in common. Concatenation, rather, is the taking place of the
singular. And it is in constituting the taking place of the singular that
concatenation does constitute also the taking place of the common:
for it is not through that which we have in common that we are in
common; it is, rather, in our singularity, in our immanent difference, in
our potential to become different from what we are that we are really
in common.70 In what may seem like a paradox, the concatenation
of all things is the real being-in-common precisely because it is not
the locus of common notions or concepts and because it is instead
the taking place of most singular sense-event. And only sense-event
can make us different from what we are, only sense-event consti-
tutes the causeeffect of whatever metamorphosis. In a particularly
incisive and compelling passage in Ethics V, P36S, Spinoza writes:
The knowledge of singular things, which I have called intuitive,

or, of the third kind ... is more powerful than the universal
knowledge that I have said to be of the second kind. For although
I have shown generally in Part One that all things ... depend on
God in respect of essence and existence, yet that demonstration
although legitimate and beyond doubtdoes not so affect our
mind as when it is inferred from the very essence of any singular
thing which we declare to depend on God.
In a stunning moment of clarity, this purportedly most rationalist of

philosophers tells us that thinking and knowing within the limits of
reason alone do not change a thing. Such is the trouble with reason:
it is too general, too universaland hence it does not affect us
enough. Reason and its concepts lack enough power to move us, to
transform us significantly. (Undoubtedly, this is why the critique of

ideology, absolutely necessary as it may well be at times, does not
suffice to undermine the relations of power and the relations of
production that need and produce ideology and on which ideology
depends. Undoubtedly, this is also what Spinoza is hinting at in his
famous example of our perception of the distance separating us
from the sun.)71 In particular, that which Spinoza demonstrates in
Ethics I as concept according to the diktat of reasonnamely, that
all things ... depend on God in respect of essence and existence,
that all things are embedded in that which at once causes them and
inheres in them, that all things are concatenatedis never so powerful
as when it makes sense at the level of our very essence, at the level
of our link to the link of all links, at the level of our most singular
manner of being-in-common, of being-in-the-world.
The concatenation of all things is the world as plane of im-
manence, namely, as that which can neither be represented nor be
conceptualized and can only be expressed as sense-event or transcen-
dental precondition of both representations and concepts.72 Strictly
speaking, the plane of immanence cannot even be thought. In What
Is Philosophy?in a passage that names Spinoza as the greatest
philosopher owing to his unparalleled ability to engage with the
plane of immanenceDeleuze and Guattari write that the plane
of immanence is the nonthought within thought ... that which
cannot be thought and yet must be thought, that which can only
be shown as taking place and being there unthought in each and
every thing.73 Translated in a slightly different language: plane of
immanence is unconscious. Elsewhere, Deleuze calls it precisely that.
In a remarkable essay on the ethics of the Ethics, Deleuze credits
Spinoza with the discovery of the unconscious, of an unconscious
of thought just as profound as the unknown of the body.74 Crucially, he
adds, The entire Ethics is a voyage in immanence; but immanence
is the unconscious itself, and the conquest of the unconscious.75
Immanence is the unconscious and its own conquest, just like im-
manence is substance and modes, concatenation and things. Far from
being a Cartesian conquestnamely, a transcendent triumph of the
mind and of its reason over the body and its nonreasonsuch a con-
quest is precisely that intuitive knowledge by which things may posit
themselves as incorporated in concatenation, by which modes may
produce their singular essence as link to the essence of substance,

by which we may produce ourselves as sense-event or causeeffect
of the unconscious (and Spinoza is adamant that such a knowledge
involves equally body and mind; cf. Ethics V, P39, P39S). Intuitive
knowledge is knowledge of the unconscious or plane of immanence
or concatenation of all things. It is only thanks to such knowledge that
we may read, map, produce in both reason and representation that
syntagmatic and metonymic logic of the geopolitical unconscious
that is the world as concatenation of all things.
Intuitive knowledge constituted Spinozas attempt to provide a
radical solution to a novel philosophical and political problem. (And
I take it as axiomatic that solutions and problems arise simultane-
ously by definition, in the sense that a problem comes into being and
can be formulated as such only to the extent to which its solution is
already in process, unfolding, surfacingin short, already present
in however indeterminate a form.) The problem was how to make
sense of a phenomenon that could not be understood adequately
either by representation or by reason, namely, that ontological con-
nectivity given in the concept of absolute immanence whose first
actual manifestation was beginning to emerge in the early modern
era in the form of nexus rerum, world market, or globalizing capital-
ism. Intuitive knowledge was born in relation and as an answer to
capital and to its globalizing tendency and totalizing imperative.76 In
fact, it was born, as it were, in competition with and as an alternative
to capital, in the sense that both the logic of capital and the logic
of intuitive knowledge deal in potentiality. As Marx was the first to
discover, in fact, possibly the crucial and defining novelty of capital-
ism as a mode of production consists in positing potentiality qua
potentiality as the object of exchange par excellence: under capitalist
relations of production, the worker sells not acts of laborthat is,
actual forms of productive activitybut labor power, which Marx
famously defines in Capital as the aggregate of those mental and
physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living person-
ality, of a human being.77 In the Grundrisse, Marx writes, The use
value which the worker has to offer to the capitalist, which he has
to offer to others in general, is not materialized in a product, does
not exist apart from him at all, thus exists not really, but only in
potentiality, as his capacity.78 It is in this sense that capital deals in
potentiality: in capital, the production of surplus value is founded

precisely on the expropriation and exchange of such incorporeal
yet incorporated potentiality (and hence such production cannot be
understood, let alone counteracted and combated, if one considers
the world only from the standpoint of actuality, namely, within the
limits of representation and reason alone).79 And as we have seen,
intuitive knowledge, too, concerns itself with potentiality above all,
in the sense that it involves, mobilizes, and complements both reason
and representation to seize on that singular-common potential to
become different from what we are, which is our very essence and
which constitutes our link to the world, to the concatenation of all
things.80 Crucially, this is knowledge from which, according to Spi-
noza, there necessarily arises the intellectual love of Goda love
that is eternal (Ethics V, P33). (And, as Althusser points out, given
that for Spinoza intuitive knowledge involves both mind and body,
the love that arises from it is in no way an intellectual love.81)
Whereas capital mortifies potentiality by extracting it from bod-
ies and actualizing it in and as value, intuitive knowledge glorifies
potentiality not only by incorporating it at once as our singularity
and as our being-in-common but also by actualizing it as love of the
world. Spinozas wager was that the ontological connectivity he had
discovered as concept in absolute immanence and as sense-event in
the concatenation of all things could be actualized, materialized,
and incorporated as love. This is the question he asks us urgently
across the vicissitudes of modernity and that is for us to answer in
this third and fully global stage of capitalism: because our globaliza-
tion is only one possible manifestation of the concatenation of all
things, is another globalization possible that would glorify our most
singular and most common potential as love? Is it possible to restore
our link to and our belief in this intolerable world? Is it possible to
love the world today?82
Notes
i am truly grateful to Dimitris Vardoulakis for his incisive and invalu-

able comments on this essay as well as for his unwavering patience in
dealing with the numerous delays in its completion. The essay is dedi-
cated to Jason Christensonnot only because he endured the vagaries
of my writing moods with the grace that always distinguishes his love
but also because love, ultimately, is what this essay is all about.
All references to the Ethics in English are to the following editions:
Spinoza, Ethics, ed. and trans. G.H.R. Parkinson (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000). The Latin edition consulted for all the references
is Benedicti de Spinoza, Opera, ed. J. Van Vloten and J.P.N. Land (The
Hague: Martinum Nijhoff, 1914).
1 Louis Althusser, Lenin before Hegel, in Lenin and Philosophy, and

Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1971), 124.
2 Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
(Rough Draft), trans. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Pen-
guin Books, 1974), 105.
3 During these four decades, there have been (1) thinkers who have
written about Marx and Spinoza in separate yet closely related
works such as Negri in Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse,
trans. Harry Cleaver, Michael Ryan, and Maurizio Viano, ed. Jim
Fleming (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1991), and The Savage Anomaly:
The Power of Spinozas Metaphysics and Politics, trans. Michael Hardt
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), as well as
tienne Balibar (with Louis Althusser) in Reading Capital, trans.
Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1997), and Spinoza and Politics, trans.
Peter Snowdon (London: Verso, 1998); (2) thinkers who refer
implicitly or in passing to the relation between Spinoza and Marx
such as Althusser in Reading Capital and in his autobiographical
writings as well as Warren Montag in Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza
and His Contemporaries (London: Verso, 1999); (3) thinkers whose
entire Weltanschauung is imbued thoroughly with Spinozan and the
Marxian problematics, regardless of whether they acknowledge it
explicitly (see, among others, Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari in
both volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Michael Hardt and

Negri in all their collaborative works, and Paolo Virno in A Gram-
mar of the Multitude, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, and
Andrea Casson [New York: Semiotext(e), 2003]); and (4) thinkers
who confront the SpinozaMarx relation indirectly yet significantly
via the examination of a third and related thinker (see, e.g., Pierre
Machereys important study Hegel ou Spinoza [Paris: Maspero, 1977]
as well as Nicholas Thoburns Deleuze, Marx, and Politics [London:
Routledge, 2003]). Arguably, among these various and immensely
valuable attempts to combine Spinozas and Marxs systems of
thought, the most influential one remains Althussers pioneering
contribution to Reading Capital, which, in many respects, is still
unsurpassed. All significant differences notwithstanding, what
these thinkers share in common is at the very least an understand-
ing of Spinozas immanentist materialism as a crucial precursor of
Marxs philosophical and political project (where precursor ought
to be understood not only in historical but also in logical terms,
in the sense that both Spinozas and Marxs systems of thought
shared the same condition of possibility or cause in the immanent
structures of thought and life inaugurated by capitalist modernity
rather than one system being the direct and transitive cause of the
other). In short, the body of Spinozist Marxism is abundantyet
the literature on Spinoza and Marx is thin. Thin as it is, however, it
is notable and significant nonetheless. In particular, I would like to
refer the reader to three important exceptions: Eugene Hollands
essay Spinoza and Marx, Cultural Logic 2, no. 1 (1998), http://
clogic.eserver.org/21/holland.html (which discusses some of
the works mentioned earlier and cites three earlier precursors,
Maximilien Rubels Marx a la rencontre de Spinoza, Alexandre
Matherons Le Traite Theologico-Politique vu par le jeune Marx,
and Albert Igoins De lellipse de la theorie politique de Spinoza chez
le jeune Marx, all published in 1977 in the journal Cahiers Spinoza);
Kiarina Kordelas remarkable study $urplus: Spinoza, Lacan (New
York: State University of New York Press, 2007) (which constructs
a tetradic philosophical structure, whose complementary concep-
tual personae, as Deleuze and Guattari might call them, consist of
Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Marx, and Jacques Lacan); and Brynnar
Swensons Multitude, Inc.: Class, Capital and the Corporation,
in The Corporate Form: Capital, Fiction, Architecture (doctoral

dissertation, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative
Literature, University of Minnesota, 2008). For Holland, possibly
the most important insight that Spinozist Marxism stands to gain
from a direct confrontation between Spinoza and Marx is the
eradication of teleologism from the forces/relation of production
model in two ways: there would be no guarantee that forces of
production will continue to develop even in the face of restrictive
or destructive relations of production; and even if they were to,
there would be no guarantee that such development will eventuate
in any increase in human freedom. Judging from Kordelas pointed
critiques of Hardt and Negris teleological tendencies, I believe
she is in full agreement with Holland on this matter. Kordela,
$urplus, 25, 12730. Kordelas project, however, goes beyond the
level of critique, as the examination of Spinoza and Marx in her
work constitutes an explicit attempt to produce what she refers to
as an ontology of differential (non-)substance, according to which
the registers on which Being needs to be named are the follow-
ing: (1) being as the imaginary univocity of abstract thought, that is, as
simulacrum (exchange-value or signifier); (2) beings as the multiplicity of
being (use-value or physical beings); and (3) the primary, transcendent,
yet immanent, differential (non-)substance that at once institutes the
above duplicity and is the effect thereof (surplus). Kordela, $urplus,
4647 (this is the culmination of a complex argument, and hence
I refer the reader at the very least also to pp. 3849, in which the
intermediary, logical steps leading to this conclusion are taken).
Unlike Hollands and Kordelas arguments, Swensons argument
is not only theoretical but also historical, as it shows that both
Spinozas and Marxs systems of thought developed in response to
specific developments in the history of the corporate form (whose
primary manifestations include the joint-stock company and its
contemporary avatar, namely, the multinational corporation). In
particular, Swenson argues that it was precisely in response to the
incorporeal yet collective character of the corporate form that
Spinoza and Marx posited social relations rather than individuals as
the starting point for their nonhumanist understanding of politics
and economics. I have found Hollands, Kordelas, and Swensons
direct engagements with the SpinozaMarx relation (as well as the
aforementioned indirect engagements) to be provocative, illuminat-

ing, and productive: traces of all of them may be found throughout
this essay. Last, let me add that as this essay is going into production,
a new book on Marx and Spinoza has just been published, which
I have not yet been able to consult. Frdric Lordon, Capitalisme,
dsir et servitude: Marx et Spinoza (Paris: La Fabrique, 2010).
4 Cesare Casarino, Surplus Common, in Cesare Casarino and Anto-
nio Negri, In Praise of the Common: A Conversation on Philosophy and
Politics, 139 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008),
esp. 3037. In many respects, this present essay constitutes a further
elaboration of some of the arguments articulated in Casarino,
Surplus Common.
5 Marx, Grundrisse, 4078.
6 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben
Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1976), 253.
7 Ibid., 251.
8 Ibid., 253.
9 Kojin Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money,
trans. Sabu Kohso, ed. Michael Speaks (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1995), 183.
10 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capital-
ism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991), 41112.
11 Ibid., 40910.
12 Fredric Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the
World System (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 31. In
a sense, this entire work can be understood as an ambitious and
largely successful attempt to articulate the desire called cognitive
mapping as that nonrepresentational kind of knowledge that may
detect and register the unrepresentable (totality) within representa-
tion. See p. 3, but also all of pp. 15, as well as the entire first section
on Totality as Conspiracy, pp. 784.
13 The first sentence of the appendix reads as follows: With this I
have explained the nature and properties of God, such as that he
necessarily exists; that he is unique; that he exists and acts solely
by the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all
things, and in what way; that all things exist in God, and depend on
him in such a way that without him they can neither exist nor be
conceived; and finally that all things were predetermined by God,
not out of freedom of will, i.e. his absolute good pleasure, but
from the absolute nature of God, i.e. his infinite power [potentia].
For Spinozas understanding of substance as immanent cause, see,
Ethics I, D1, D3, D5, D6, A1, and A2 as well as P18.
14 Translation modified. More specifically, for the purposes of the
present arguments, I find it preferable to translate concatenationem
as concatenation and explicui as I have explicated rather than
as Parkinsons interconnection and I have explained, respec-
tively.
15 The Latin res in Spinoza has a more extensive meaning than the
corresponding term thing in English. On this matter, see Seymour
Feldmans translators introduction to Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics
and Selected Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley, ed. and with an introduc-
tion by Seymour Feldman (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1982), 24.
16 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles
Stivale, ed. Constantin Boundas (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1990), 14.
17 Ibid., 19.
18 Ibid., 2122.
19 I am noting here a striking similarity between Deleuzes concep-
tion of sense and Giorgio Agambens conception of a surplus of
being (as articulated in Saint Thomass treatise on halos). Giorgio
Agamben, The Coming Community, trans. Michael Hardt (Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 5356.
20 The first instance of definition and discussion of all three kinds of
knowledge occurs in Ethics II, P40S2. Spinoza discusses in more
detail his theory of knowledge in Ethics II (esp. from P13 onward)
as well as in Ethics V (which is primarily devoted to the third kind
of knowledge).
21 Gilles Deleuze has written eloquently on the special role of the
scholia in the Ethics. Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza and the Three Eth-
ics, in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and
Michael A. Greco, 13851 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press), esp. 14547 and 151.
22 The late Latin concatenatio is a verbal noun morphologically related
to the past participle of the verb catenare, namely, catenatus (i.e.,
chained, bound, fettered, etc.)a verb itself related to the
noun catena (i.e., chain, hinge, etc.). Importantly, concatenatio
also includes the prefix cum and hence means literally a binding
with, a chaining together, etc.
23 Here is the original passage: Porro ubicunque data fuit occasio,
praejudicia, quae impedire poterant, quo minus meae demonstrationes
perciperentur, amovere curavi; sed quia non pauca adhuc restant praeju-
dicia, quae etiam, imo maxime impedire poterant, et possunt, quo minus
homines rerum concatenationem eo, quo ipsam explicui, modo amplecti
possint, eadem hic ad examen rationis vocare operae pretium duxi.
24 This sentence occurs in a letter to a friend, as quoted by Steven
Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 111.
25 Gilles Deleuze, Life of Spinoza, in Spinoza: Practical Philosophy,
trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 7.
26 Even leaving aside the significant, complex, and global trade net-
works in which his family firm was involved, Spinozas more or
less indirect connections to the Americas were manifold. First
of all, several among Spinozas close relatives emigrated to the
Caribbean: during his lifetime, the younger brother Gabriel, with
whom he had managed the family firm after their fathers death,
and who had taken over the firm after Spinozas excommunication,
moved first to Barbados, and then to Jamaica, where he became a
naturalized English subject, whereas shortly after his own death,
the sister Rebecca moved with her children to Curaao. See Nadler,
Spinoza, 86, 87. Furthermore, Spinozas childhood teacher, Isaac
Aboab da Fonseca, moved to Recife, Brazil, in 1642, to serve as a
rabbi in that citys newly established congregation, thereby becom-
ing the first rabbi in the Americas (and, as Spinozas contemporary
and biographer Johan Colerus claims, it was no other than Aboab
da Fonseca who, having returned eventually to Amsterdam due to
the Portuguese capture of Recife in 1654, read the document pro-
claiming Spinozas excommunication in public). See Peter Wiernik,
History of the Jews in America: From the Period of the Discovery of the
New World to the Present Time (New York: Jewish Press, 1912), 38,
as well as Steven Nadler, Spinozas Heresy: Immortality and the Jew-
ish Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 13. Moreover,
before his excommunication, and while head of the family firm,
Spinoza is documented as having contributed to charity funds for
the Jewish poor of Brazil, possibly as a memorial gift for his dead
father. See Nadler, Spinoza, 118. Most famously, perhaps, in a 1664

letter to his friend Pieter Balling, Spinoza mentions being haunted
by the image of a certain black and leprous Brazilian who ap-
peared to him in a very unpleasant dream. Benedict de Spinoza,
On the Improvement of the Understanding. The Ethics. Correspondence.
Volume 2, trans. R.H.M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1955), 325. This
letterand the geopolitical unconscious it indexesis the topic of
another essay on which I am working at present.
27 The immanence of potentiality and actuality without any remain-
der is affirmed implicitly and explicitly throughout the Ethics in a
variety of ways and contexts. This may seem to contradict what
I have stated earlier. When it comes to God, e.g., Spinoza argues
that his existence and essence are one and the same (see Ethics I,
P20). Crucially, he argues also that the power [potentia] of God is
his essence (see Ethics I, P34). In short, Gods potential is always al-
ready actually existent, or Gods essence is always already actualized
potential for existence. (Or, as he puts it in Ethics I, P11S, God ...
has an absolutely infinite power [potentia] of existing, and therefore
exists absolutely.) So although the distinction between essence and
existence with respect to God is in effect an analytical rather than
a real distinction, it is the case nonetheless that their being one
and the same does not indicate in and of itself how they are so
exactly. After all, given that Gods essence is expressed by an infinity
of attributes, and given that each attribute is its own distinct kind
(see Ethics I, D6, including its explanation), the unity of essence and
existence is instantiated in an infinity of distinct kinds. Put differ-
ently, that Gods always already actualized potential for existence
is infinite means that the immanence of potentiality and actuality
is subject to infinity. Though, unlike God, modes are relative and
finite, and their essence does not involve existence, the immanence
of potentiality and actuality holds for them too. In Ethics IV, P4Pr.,
e.g., Spinoza writes, The power [potentia] by which particular
things, and consequently a man, preserve their being is the power
[potentia] of God, i.e. of Nature ... not in so far as it is infinite, but
in so far as it can be explained by actual human essence.... So the
power [potentia] of a man, in so far as it is explained through his
actual essence, is a part of the infinite power [potentia], that is, of
the essence ... of God, i.e. of Nature. Modal essence, thus, is a
relative and finite degree of Gods absolute and infinite potential

for existence: it enables modes to preserve their beingi.e., to
continue to be actualizedfor an indeterminate though limited
duration. In short, that which is potential in modesnamely, their
essenceis always already actualized in and as their existence. In
Expressionism in Philosophy, Deleuze discusses extensively the ques-
tion of power (intended as puissance, as potentiality) in the Ethics. At
one point during that discussion, he writes, The identity of power
[puissance] and essence means: a power [puissance] is always an act
or, at least, in action.... [A] mode ... has no power [puissance]
that is not actual: it is at each moment all that it can be, its power
[puissance] is its essence. Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy:
Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990), 93.
More succinctly, in a later essay, Deleuze writes, All potentia is act,
active, and actual. Gilles Deleuze, Index of the Main Concepts
of the Ethics, in Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, 97, but see
also 99 and 101. That for modes all potential is actual, however,
does not tell us anything of any sort about what exactly that actual
consists of or entails. That potentiality and actuality are strictly
immanent for modes does not even begin to address the question
of the specific modalities of being of such immanence in the first
place. For modes, after all, the plane of immanence is not given a
priori: on the contrary, it has to be actively constructed anew each
and every time (on this matter, see also n. 72 and 73).
28 iek has made this argument repeatedly (largely as a way of cri-
tiquing the Anglo-American reception of Deleuzes thought). See,
among other works, Slavoj iek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant,
Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 1993), 21619. For a welcome and salutary antidote to ieks
Hegelo-Lacanian reading of Spinoza, see Kordelas Lacanian yet not
Hegelian $urplus (discussed in n. 3). Incidentally, though I put much
emphasis throughout this essay on that work by Deleuze that for
iek represents Deleuze at his best (i.e., The Logic of Sense), I do
not share ieks veritably Manichean interpretation of Deleuzes
philosophical project as split between two irreconcilable logicsa
materialist logic best exemplified by The Logic of Sense and an ideal-
ist logic best exemplified by Anti-Oedipus, which iek considers to
be arguably Deleuzes worst book. Slavoj iek, Organs without
Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2004), 21,

but see also at least 1941. In general, even though there are aspects
of Anti-Oedipus that I do find problematic and at times essentialist
(though it should be noted also that these aspects are largely absent
from the sequel, i.e., A Thousand Plateaus), I find ieks outright
dismissal of Anti-Oedipus and attendant demonization of Deleuzes
collaboration with Guattari to be facile, to say the least. For a far
more thoughtful and productive engagement with Anti-Oedipus and
A Thousand Plateaus, see Fredric Jamesons Marxism and Dualism
in Deleuze, in A Deleuzian Century, ed. Ian Buchanan (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 1336. For incisive discussions
of ieks book on Deleuze, see Daniel W. Smith, The Inverse
Side of the Structure: iek on Deleuze on Lacan, Criticism 46,
no. 4 (2004): 63550, as well as Eleanor Kaufman, Betraying Well,
Criticism 46, no. 4 (2004): 65159.
29 For related arguments (regarding capitalism as only one possible
manifestation of immanence), see Kordela, $urplus, 1058, as well
as much of Casarino, Surplus Common.
30 On this matter, see Nadler, Spinoza, 12938.
31 Baruch Spinoza, Ethics and Selected Letters, 233, 234; translation
modified. Spinoza, Opera, 3, 5.
32 Benedict de Spinoza, Improvement of the Understanding, Ethics, and
Correspondence, trans. Robert Harvey Monro Elwes (Washington,
D.C.: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), 368; translation modified.
33 Spinoza, Improvement of the Understanding, 369.
34 Spinoza, Ethics and Selected Letters, 235; translation modified. Spinoza,
Opera, 5.
35 Marx, Capital, 1:253.
36 On this matter, see, among others, tienne Balibar, The Vacil-
lation of Ideology, trans. Andrew Ross and Constance Penley,
in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and
Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988),
204; Maximilien Rubel, Marx Critique du Marxisme (Paris: Payot,
2000), 17273; and Pierre-Franois Moreau, Spinozas Reception
and Influence, trans. Roger Ariew, in The Cambridge Companion to
Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), 426.
37 Aristotle, Politics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon,
trans. W.D. Ross (New York: Random House, 1941), 1135, 1137,
113940. I have discussed in more detail these passages (as well
as related passages of the Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics) in
terms of their influence on Marxs thought in Casarino, Surplus
Common, 2328, 26064.
38 Aristotle, Basic Works, 1141.
39 On this matter, see, among others, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Stoic
and Neoplatonic Sources of Spinozas Ethics, in Spinoza: Criti-
cal Assessments, vol. 1, ed. Genevieve Lloyd (London: Routledge,
2001), 118, and Nadler, Spinoza, 15153, 167, 21011. But see also
Spinozas implicit approval of Descartess critique of certain aspects
of Scholastic philosophy in the preface to Ethics Va critique that,
Spinoza claims, not even Descartes himself followed properly and
to its logical conclusions.
40 I have engaged in more detail with Marxs analytic of money in two
other essays (which the following discussion draws from in part as
well as takes in different directions): Time Matters: Marx, Negri,
Agamben, and the Corporeal, in Casarino and Negri, In Praise
of the Common, 23545, and White Capital; or, Heterotopologies
of the Limit, in Cesare Casarino, Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx,
Conrad in Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002),
63183.
42 Ibid., 221.
43 Ibid., 223. It is evident from the rest of this page and from the fol-
lowing couple of pages that Marx thinks that what he has just stated
in this passage is valid for all mercantile societies, from antiquity up
until and including seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mercantil-
ism proper. Ibid., 22325.
44 Ibid., 222.
45 As I point out elsewhere, however, there may be some indication in
Aristotle of possible relations between the realm of the metaphysi-
cal and the realm of the economic. Casarino and Negri, In Praise
of the Common, 28, 26162n55.
47 Ibid., 223.
48 Ibid., 225.
49 It is worth pointing out, however, that even though the wage came
into full fruition with modern industrial manufacture, its histori-

cal origins are specifically maritime, as it had been devised first for
merchant sea labor during the sixteenth century and hence harks
back precisely to the economies of Mercantilism. Whereas in
ancient, medieval, and early modern shipping, sea labor was paid
predominantly according to the share systemwhich allotted sea-
men with a proportional share of the profitduring the sixteenth
century a shift to the wage system began to take place as part of
larger transformations in property law. See Marcus Redikers study
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and
the Anglo-American Maritime World, 17001750 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1987), 7879, 11652 (esp. 118), 28991.
50 The third and contemporary stage in the development of the
capitalist mode of production has been referred to variously as
global capitalism, multinational capitalism, late capitalism,
flexible capitalism, postmodern capitalism, post-Fordism,
real subsumption, biopolitical production, immaterial pro-
duction, etc. This is not the place to address the vast literature
on such nomenclatureswhose abundance and diversity already
attest to the unprecedented complexity of the object they attempt
to name. I have discussed these matters in more detail in another
essay, Universalism of the Common, Diacritics (forthcoming). A
few words on my characterization of this third stage specifically as
communicative, however, are necessary here (and this is a char-
acterization that is compatible with several of the aforementioned
designations but that also wishes to highlight what I consider to
be a crucial feature of contemporary capitalist globalization). All
three stages may be called capitalism because they all share in the
production of surplus value (i.e., in the simultaneous expropria-
tion and materialization of surplus in and as the form of value).
In each of these stages, however, surplus value is produced in dif-
ferent ways, which is what the attributive qualifiers mercantile,
industrial, and communicative signify. (Obviously, these stages
should not be understood only diachronically but also synchron-
ically: the types of production involved in each not only are not
necessarily mutually exclusive but also are often spatiotemporally
coexistent and are now fully complementary and cumulative.)
In communicative capitalism, the production of surplus value is
based primarily on communicationand especially on the com-

munication of thought, language, and affect, in all their myriad
forms. From the emergent media network and spectacle society
analyzed with much foresight by the likes of Marshall McLuhan
and Guy Debord already in the 1960s to the increasingly complex
and pervasive production and circulation of the image in its various
forms, from the computerization of so many aspects of production
and distribution to the internetization of so many (old and new)
forms of exchange relations (including social exchange), from online
financial transactions to the circulation of knowledge of all sorts,
from the call-center phenomenon to customer-satisfaction man-
agement, from the swelling of the service industry as such to the
growing importance of the service component in all aspects of the
entire process of production, the labor involved in communicating
forms of thought, language, and affect has become the increasingly
dominant and determining form of labor, and hence of exploita-
tion, today. (Importantly, I intend qualifiers such as dominant and
determining in strictly qualitative terms: other forms of laborsuch
as the labor involved in modern industrial production organized
according to Taylorist principles or the labor involved in premodern
and precapitalist processes of agricultural productionnot only are
alive and well but also may well still constitute quantitatively some
of the most common forms of labor nowadays; such modern and
premodern forms of labor, however, are increasingly determined
and dependent on more properly postmodern forms of communi-
cative labor for their continued existence and profitability.) Such an
understanding of contemporary global capitalism as fundamentally
communicative is particularly germane to Balibars interpretation
of Spinozas entire philosophical system as a highly original phi-
losophy of communication. tienne Balibar, Spinoza and Politics,
99 (this entire work concerns itself, directly or indirectly, with the
question of communication in Spinoza, but see esp. pp. 95124).
51 Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, 1516, 353n11.
52 Ibid., 15.
53 More precisely, Deleuze writes, To explicate is to evolve, to in-
volve is to implicate. Yet the two terms are not opposites: they
simply mark two aspects of expression. Expression is on the one
hand an explication, an unfolding of what expresses itself, the One
manifesting itself in the Many (substance manifesting itself in its

attributes, and these manifesting themselves in their modes). Its
multiple expression, on the other hand, involves Unity. The One
remains involved in what expresses it, imprinted in what unfolds
it, immanent in whatever manifests it: expression is in this respect
an involvement. There is no conflict between the two terms....
Expression in general involves and implicates what it expresses, while
also explicating and evolving it. Ibid., 16. It is in passages such as
this one in Expressionism in Philosophy that we may already glean
the important role that the concept of the fold will come to play
for Deleuze two decades later, when he will elaborate this concept
further in his monograph on Michel Foucault and, especially, in his
monograph on G.W. Leibniz.
54 Spinoza is mentioned in Lucretius and the Simulacrumone of
the four appendices to The Logic of Sensewhich had been written
and had appeared earlier as a separate essay. Deleuze, Logic of Sense,
273.
56 Ibid., 102.
57 I am implying that the onto-epistemological processes involved in
expression and explication are at the very least related to Lacans
definition of the unconscious as discourse of the Other (where Other
indexes radical alterity, as opposed to the egos always projective
and imaginary otherness).
58 I am referring here to that prototypical instrumental reason that
Descartes declares to be seeking in Discourse on Method and that he
defines in the following manner: a practical philosophy by means
of which, knowing the force and the action of fire, water, air, the
stars, heavens and all other bodies that environ us, as distinctly as
we know the different crafts of our artisans, we can in the same
way employ them in all those uses to which they are adapted, and
thus render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature. Ren
Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations, trans. Elizabeth
Sanderson Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (New York: Dover, 2003),
4142.
60 Here as well as later, I do not differentiate between being and act-
ing, and between thinking and knowing, because I am persuaded
by Deleuzes argument throughout Expressionism in Philosophy that

in Spinoza the power of being always involves also the power of
acting, and the power of thinking always involves also the power of
knowing. See, e.g., Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, 12022.
61 Ibid., 18.
62 In particular, Deleuze has Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in mind
here. Deleuze, Logic of Sense, 14445.
63 Deleuze, Logic of Sense, 14546, but see also 14647.
65 Spinoza is unequivocal regarding the nonrepresentational nature
of ideaswhich are modes of thought rather than modes of ex-
tension like signs and imagesand hence of the second kind of
knowledge; on this matter, see at least the second paragraph of
Ethics II, P49S.
66 E.g., as Deleuze notes in the long passage quoted earlier from The
Logic of Sense, the perception of death as a state of affairs and as a
quality, or the concept mortal as a predicate of signification, remain
extrinsic (deprived of sense) as long as they do not encompass the
event of dying as that which is actualized in the one and expressed
in the other.... To know that we are mortal is an apodeictic knowl-
edge, albeit empty and abstract; effective and successive deaths do
not suffice of course in fulfilling this knowledge adequately, so
long as one does not come to know death as an impersonal event
provided with an always open problematic structure (where and
when?). Deleuze, Logic of Sense, 145.
67 On the complementary relations among the three kinds of knowl-
edge, see Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, 273320, esp. 298301,
and Genevieve Lloyd, Spinoza and the Ethics (New York: Routledge,
1996), 70.
68 Lloyd, Spinoza and the Ethics, 67.
69 On the singularity of essence, see Ethics II, D2, P10, P10S2, P37. On
the relation between essence and existence in substance as well as
in modes, see Ethics I, D1, D3, D5, D6, D8, A1, A7, P20.
70 Singularity, in other words, is labor power as defined by Marx: I
will return to this matter at the end of this essay. On the comple-
mentarity of the singular and the common, see Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of
Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004), at least 198, 2034, 34849.
71 In Ethics II, P35S, Spinoza writes, When we see the sun, we imagine
it to be about two hundred feet distant from us; an error which
consists, not in this imagination alone, but in the fact that whilst
we imagine the sun in this way we are ignorant of its true distance
and of the cause of this imagination. For even after we get to know
that the sun is distant from us by over six hundred diameters of the
earth we shall still imagine it to be close at hand. For we imagine the
sun to be so close, not because we are ignorant of its true distance,
but because an affection of our body involves the essence of the
sun in so far as the body is affected by the sun.
72 On the plane of immanence understood as the nonconceptual condi-
tion of possibility of any concept whatsoever, Deleuze and Guattari
write in What Is Philosophy? If philosophy begins with the creation
of concepts, then the plane of immanence must be regarded as
prephilosophical. It is presupposed not in the way that one concept
may refer to others but in the way that concepts themselves refer
to a nonconceptual understanding .. . [an] intuitive understanding
[that] varies according to the way in which the plane is laid out.. . .
Philosophy posits as prephilosophical, or even as nonphilosophical,
the power of a OneAll like a moving desert that concepts come to
populate. Prephilosophical does not mean something preexistent
but rather something that does not exist outside philosophy, although
philosophy presupposes it.... Precisely because the plane of im-
manence is prephilosophical and does not immediately take effect
with concepts, it implies a sort of groping experimentation and its
layout resorts to measures that are not very respectable, rational,
or reasonable. These measures belong to the order of dreams, of
pathological processes, esoteric experiences, drunkenness, and
excess. We head for the horizon, on the plane of immanence, and
we return with bloodshot eyes, yet they are the eyes of the mind.
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh
Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994), 4041. Though Spinoza has not been mentioned yet at
this point in What Is Philosophy?, he is ubiquitous in this passage. E.g.,
the nonconceptual and intuitive understanding that appertains
to the plane of immanence constitutes a barely veiled reference to
Spinozas intuitive knowledge, and the bloodshot eyes of the
mind (which any sighting of the plane of immanence will cause)
constitute an allusion to Ethics V, P23S, in which Spinoza explains

that the eyes of the mind, by which it sees and observes things,
are demonstrations. Surely enough, Spinoza appears shortly
thereafter in this work as the philosopher who laid out the best
plane of immanence (Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?
60), thereby fulfilling philosophy: [Spinoza] fulfilled philosophy
because he satisfied its prephilosophical presupposition. Immanence
does not refer back to the Spinozist substance and modes but, on
the contrary, the Spinozist concepts of substance and modes refer
back to the plane of immanence as their presupposition. Deleuze
and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 48. Given that Deleuze and
Guattari define philosophy in effect as conceptual knowledge, the
implication of this passage is that conceptual knowledge finds its
fulfillmentthat is, its full fruition and highest realizationin that
intuitive knowledge whose unique capacity, function, and task it is
to engage with the plane of immanence. On this matter, see also
Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy, 296, 298301.
73 Deleuze and Guattari write, THE plane of immanence is, at the
same time, that which must be thought and that which cannot be
thought. It is the nonthought within thought.. .. Perhaps this is
the supreme act of philosophy: not so much to think THE plane
of immanence as to show that it is there, unthought in every plane,
and to think it in this way as the outside and inside of thought, as
the not-external outside and the not-internal insidethat which
cannot be thought and yet must be thought. Deleuze and Guat-
tari, What Is Philosophy?, 5960.
74 Gilles Deleuze, On the Difference between the Ethics and a Moral-
ity, in Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, 9.
76 It is significant to note in this context that the first concrete (and
rather peculiar) example Spinoza gives of intuitive knowledge in
Ethics II, P40S2, is the almost instantaneous deductive reasoning
deployed by merchants in applying the rule of the fourth propor-
tionalan example that, hence, involves money and the exchange
relation. So important this example must have been for Spinoza that
he uses it already in The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.
Spinoza, Ethics and Selected Letters, 238. Spinoza, Opera, 89.
77 Marx, Capital, 1:277.

79 On Marxs method as a method of reading forthat is, mapping
and producingpotentiality, see Louis Althusser, From Capital to
Marxs Philosophy, in Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, esp.
1930.
80 On essence understood as potentiality, see n. 27.
81 Louis Althusser, The Only Materialist Tradition. Part I: Spinoza,
in The New Spinoza, ed. Warren Montag and Ted Stolze, trans. Ted
Stolze (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 18.
82 Somebody who has gone far in addressing these questions is Deleuze
in those moving pages in which he affirms that the highest politi-
cal vocation of modern cinema consists precisely in its potential
for restoring our link to, belief in, and love of the world. Gilles
Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989),
16973.
part iii
Spinoza and the Arts
9
Image and Machine:
Introduction to Thomas
Hirschhorns Spinoza
Monument
sebastian egenhofer
i would like to outline the topic of the field in which Thomas

Hirschhorns 1999 Spinoza Monument is situated as an artwork, as a
material locus for the production of a truth. The space in which this
topic is inscribed has two primary dimensions: the lateral dimen-
sion of extension of the field itself and the vertical dimension of
its economicand that means, following Marx and also Deleuze
and Spinozaits genetic and ontological structure. The phenom-
enal, imagistic (bildfrmige) aspect of the works is part of the fields
extension. I call the vertical dimension of ontological genesis the
dimension of production. Drawing on a few paradigmatic posi-
tions, I will try to sketch the relationship between image or form
and production in the art of modernity. Within this conceptual and
historical framework, I want to determine the relationship between
Hirschhorns sculpture (he rejects the term installation for his work)
and postabstract art since the 1960s. And I want to connect his way
of working, and especially the materiality of his works, with the
work of another Spinozist, namely, Mondrian. I would like to put
the precarious materiality of Hirschhorns workswhich stems from
the circulation of images and commodities and, above all, from the
Translated by Michael Eldred
237
238 S E BASTI AN EGE NHO FER
evaporative layer of packaging materials, and which, therefore, is

explicitly related to todays economic and media reality and also
withdrawn from itinto relation to Mondrians purified image ele-
ments, the primary colors and the rectangular grid of lines as the
energetic and structural poles of painting that are withdrawn from
the space of image representation in an equally explicit way.
The field is the space of history and, in particular, the history of
art. It covers the publicly exposed reality of the works. If we include
the dimension of temporal unfolding, it is already four-dimensional.
It is, however, flat because it is the layer of phenomenality and of
phenomenalization of the world itself. In Spinozan terms, it is the
world as represented within the horizon of the finite mode that the
human being is: the apparent world as the collection of imaginings,
of perceptual images, under whose form being (the infinite substance)
is reflected in the living human body. It is also the public world
that is constituted on the basis of the multiply mediated divisibility
of these initially radically individuated worlds of images. From a
Marxian theoretical perspective, it is the world of products in whose
shine the dimension of depth closes itself off, not so much that of
the labor currently going into it but rather that of the dead, abstract
labor sedimented in the means of production. And it is the world of
images produced for the gaze that once arose rarely and rigidly from
the asphyxiating presence of the infinite in the Eucharist miracle and
offered the awaking subject a figure of its self-reflection, and whose
inflationary dissemination since the invention of photography on
the surface of todays technical image apparatus reveals the move-
ment of capital as their ground and bearer. The artworks with the
aspect of their visual form, their phenomenal or aesthetic presence,
belong to this world of sensuous illusion, of products formed as
commodities and addressed images.
That is the field. It is at least four-dimensional. How can its en-
ergetic, economic, and ontological dimension of depth be thought?
Within the topic of Spinozan ontology, this is the dimension of infi-
nite substance, of natura naturans, in whose productive or expressive
movement, as Deleuze has worked out, the finite being (the mode)
participates according to the degree of power that constitutes its es-
sence.1 This participation is unconscious, a structure of being of the
finite mode, not of consciousness, which, together with its world
IMAGE AND MACHINE 239
of images, is one of the effects, a partial effect of participation. In

Henri Bergsons language, which was influential for the thinking of
classical modernity on the critique of the images, and which relates
precisely to Spinoza in determining the relationship between the
infinite and the finite, it is the dimension of universal becoming2 that
refracts in the layer of presence3 into qualitatively differentiated be-
ings exposed in space (is explicated and canceled out, as Deleuze
will say in Difference and Repetition).4 To use terminology derived
from Kant, it is the presynthetic chaos, the dispersed multiplicity
not of sensuous impressions but of the virtual total happening of
becoming that only becomes a sensuous impression and thus the raw
material of synthetic work in the selective excerpt of affectibility of
a living body through which a subject, in this rushing, constitutes an
objective world or the order of regularity of nature, natura naturata.
And finally, apart from subjectivetranscendental contemplation
of the ontological structure of production that determines both
our own and Deleuzes view of Spinoza, it is, in the register of the
Marxian analysis of social production, the dimension of abstracted
past labor accumulated in technical, intellectual, and social means
of production and the gravitation and self-movement of this dead
labor or of capital that is manifested in the form of marketable and
consumable products.
What I call the field is the presence of the objective, imagistic,
constituted world. The genetic dimension of depth is that of natural,
subjectivetranscendental, and social or industrial production. Both
philosophically and politically, it is crucial to keep in mind that the
dimension of production cannot be made into an image, cannot be
objectified. Its exposition seals it off and distorts it. It does not belong
to reality if reality is the name for the layer of crystallization of what
has been produced, for beings or objectivity. Vis--vis the ontology
of beings, the dimension of production is heterogeneous. It desig-
nates a before that can only be narrated subsequently as a diachronic
sequence of existing circumstances. It belongs to the heterochronic
time of sedimentation or the absolute past, which stands at odds
with the present and also with the sequential happening of present
states of affairs that constitute narrative history. It is the bearer in a
higher dimension of the present and its temporal unfolding into a
horizon of memory and planning. The individual and genetic age of
240 S EBASTI AN EGE NHO FER
the living body, which is the bearer of the presence of consciousness

spanning a few seconds, is rooted in this vertical temporal depth. It
includes also the in-depth history of the development of means of
production that mediate the relationship of a society with indifferent
nature. And yet, this dimension is not, or it is only as the integral
of its effects that the presence of beings constitutes, in which, as
production, it is already past. According to its formal ontological
structure prior to differentiation into natural, transcendental, and
social production, production is determined as a folding of the
infinite into the finite, of univocal being into the differentiation of
beings.5 Everything turns on this question of translation, which is
usually subject to an original forgetting that constitutes the presence
of consciousness in its shining and brevity. The artwork, like the hu-
man subject, is a place and arrangement of this translation of the
infinite into the finite, a double-sided hinge that keeps the relationship
between its two sides legible by marking its genetic relationship to
the infinite or the dimension of production in the finite, that is, in
the form and image.
If I relate works to one another over great historical distances
and without regard to biographical relationships or to formal (phe-
nomenal) comparability, then I do this with regard to their specific
realization of this general structural relationship between image or
form and production, between the finite, present sight, and its crisis,
which unbounds it toward production. This structure is not supposed
to be understood as a presentation or interpretation of artistic inten-
tions. I am concerned with explicitly situating this casting of a topic
of modernity within a broadly conceived ontological framework
and also within the history of ideas. Above all, it is a matter of (re)-
connecting the metaphysics of modernity from the first half of the
twentieth centuryso strongly rejected by art historianswith the
critical discourses dominant since the 1960s. The twofold reference
to Spinoza and Marx is a crucial aid for this project.
I do not want to treat the historically real (textual) relationship
between Marx and Spinoza and Spinozas relationship to the golden
age of capitalism in the Netherlands, as discussed by Toni Negri.6
Systematically, Althussers and Machereys attempts to substitute
seamlessly positive Spinozan determinism for Hegelian concepts of
negativity and contradiction as the motor of history to generate a
better, nonteleological, subjectless Marxism are the decisive concep-

tions.7 It is apparent within the history of ideas or archaeologically
that capital and the movement of capital take on the systematic
place and function of the infinite substance or the natura naturans
in Spinoza, whereas the rigidified world of products circulating as
exchange values corresponds to the imaginings in whose shape the
substance appears within the horizon of the finite modes. The Spino-
zan imaginary, that is, the perceptual world itself, the illusion of the
first kind of knowledge along with its sociosymbolic stabilization in
the shared obscurantism of superstition, and the Marxian fetishized
illusion, Althussers ideology and Debords spectacle are structurally
congruent. I am concerned with the possibilities that this congruence
or, said more carefully, this homology offers for the analysis of the
field of art production in modernity. It is a matter of superimposing
a classical metaphysical critique of the image, which is initiated as
a critique of the finitude of perspectival perceptual consciousness
related to a point in space and time and of its deceptive structure, on
a critical ideological analysis of the fetishized illusion of the world
of commodities in whose perfection the dimension of production
is equally contracted, sealed off, and forgotten.
These theoretical and methodological interferences are essential
for the history of art in modernity, above all, when this history wants
to link the still epistemological work of the critique of representation
in the first half of the century, the immanent iconoclasm of the image
in abstraction, with the crisis of the presence of the work itself in
postabstract installation art. For, whereas a transcendental critique
of the illusory structure of consciousness corresponds to that work
of critique of the image and representation that finds its model in
the perspectival image of the modern age, as Spinozas theory of
knowledge casts in its own way in the second book of the Ethics, the
destruction of the immediate presence of the work in the art of the
late 1960s and 1970s is oriented toward the model of the Marxian
critique of the commodity form. This destruction relates the present
form and the form of aesthetic presencewhich in minimalism, at
the concluding moment of the modern critique of representation,
has become the pervading element in the existence and constitution
of meaning of visual artto its conditions of production in the
economic and political realm.
Put another way, since the complete materialization of the work

in its situation, for which minimal art stands, the relevance of the
work is established on the ground of its material existence and the
form of this existence. It is this form of existence that adds to the
merely present or phenomenal form that temporal depth inscribes
in it, that nonsimultaneity that links the product with the production
process, the trace with the moment of its impression. Hirschhorns
expression precariouslimited within time, just as life is8
describes this form, which can only be described in adverbial, and
not in adjectival, expressions, because here existence has to be
understood as the drive for the happening of the work and not as the
neutral presence-at-hand of a work-object. (This is reflected in the
oft-quoted maxim, To make art politically, and not political art,
which Hirschhorn borrows from Godard: the making and the mode
of having been made, and thus the mode of existence of art, are
political, and not its content or the good or bad conscience put on
show.) In view of this form, which has stepped out of the ideal space
of the image, the frame of reference for the analysis must change
from epistemology, which sees in the image primarily a figure of
reflection of the subjects relations to the world, to the logic of pro-
duction, which deciphers in the material object the expression of the
relations of production. In both registers of the analysis, that is, in
the epistemological register as well, however, as I want to show, the
crisis of the image (or of the present form) is determined as a relation
to production and not to an eidetic transcendence, itself already an
imagistic infinitude, whether it be the purportedly Platonic realm of
ideas to which Mondrians image-grid could be tied or the power of
the institution and the determining contexts to which the increas-
ingly investigative institutional critique of the 1990s ties itself. This
solidarity of the infinite with the dimension of production is made
clear by the Spinozan framework. Production as the transcendental,
ontological genesis of a world of representation whose structure is
reflected in the image, and production as the multistage shaping of
a material product in the industrial realm, are structurally congru-
ent. Critical theory, which saw the Kantian transcendental subject
with its grasping arms (synthesis of apprehension), its serial forms
(synthesis of reproduction), and its normative control (synthesis of
recognition) always as the figure of reflection of social production,
is one of the strongest supports for this interference.9 Deleuze and

Guattari confirm the enforced conformity of nature to industry and
the description of the body as part of that universal factory of being
from another perspective. I want to sketch these interlinkages as
briefly as possible with regard to the art of modernity.
The epistemological work of abstraction is still oriented toward
the model of the rational, perspectival image whose transformation
and destruction are performed by the painting of modernitythat
line of development of painting that leads from Georges Seurat via
cubism to Mondrian. The essential steps in this destruction are the
energetically differential, and no longer geometrically ideal, deter-
mination of light as the element for the genesis of the image with
Seurat; the splintering of the eye-point, that is, of the pyramidal
space of perspectival illusion in analytic cubism; and Mondrians
extraction of the elementary means of production of painting, of
the means of production not of the image-thing but of the image-
illusion, and their dynamic integration into the force field of the
neoplastic image-surface.
Its execution radiates into the here and now of the image-plane.
The new, physiological determination of vision as the work of an
eye made of flesh10 in impressionism and neoimpressionism initi-
ates the incarnation of the viewer-subject, which leads as far as its
bodily enclosure in the theatrical minimalist situation and further to
its social and sexual specification in postminimalist installation art.
Seurats atomization of the images structure and of the production
process of painting further produces a new kind of relationship
between the space and time of the imageof the scenic, narrative
phenomenonon one hand, and on the other, the space and time
of the material production of the images screen woven from the
indices of touches of the brush that technically anticipate the stream
of electrons in the magnetic cathode-ray tube. The appearance of the
image is constituted as the cavity of spatial ideality in the differential
energetic field cut by the material screen. The cubist destruction of
central perspective causes the geometrical structure of this cavity
to collapse and radically destroys the conformity between the space
of the image and the space of representation that perspective art
had formalized over five centuries. And Mondrians abstraction,
finally, leads toward a painting of surfaces that localizes the image
as a material locus in relation to the real surrounding space and its

architectural integration.
All these are moments indicating a new existential relation of the
image to its surrounding world. The increasing incidence of the trace
of production is indissolubly intermeshed with the emergence of
the phenomenon of the painting into the real surface of painting. The
modern painting is on the way to becoming an object and therefore
necessarily comes more strongly into view with regard to the form
of its production and existenceas shown almost anecdotally by
Rauschenbergs White Paintings, described as airports for the lights,
shadows, and particles.11 Nevertheless, the epistemological labor of
the images destruction, shown exemplarily by abstraction conceived
in this way from Seurat to Mondrian, is linked essentially to the im-
age as a model or analogue of consciousness. Its point of reference
is the rational, perspectival image that was conceived as a model of
perception and image representation of the subject. In each specific
relationship between materiality and phenomenon, between surface,
space, and body, between color and drawing in both representational
and abstracting painting, the structurally analogous relationship
between body and consciousness, sensuousness and rationality in
the subjects act of perception is reflected and interpreted. The cri-
tique of the image in modernity transforms this model in which the
subject found the reflex of its sensuous relationship to the world. It
thus transforms the concept of subjectivity itself. It is certain, how-
ever, that abstract painting does not surrender the epistemological
function of the image in favor of a sterile, positivist self-reflection
of its mediality as a deeply rooted formalist tradition would like to
have it. The abstract image remains determined as the prism of a
translation of the infinite into the finite in analogy to the act of the
transcendental subject, only with the difference that the determina-
tion of the poles of this translation and the structure of the prism
in modernity have been radically transformed.
The reference to Spinoza allows us to situate genetically within
the order of production the structure of this prism itselfthe a
priori transcendental structures of genesis of the finite phenomenal
world according to Kant. The structure of the finite subject, of the
hinge between the infinite and the finite, between noumenal being
and phenomenal objectivity, is itself thought genetically as a folding
of the infinite: as a temporarily stable resonance pattern within the

overall happening of becoming.12 The unconscious life of the body
participates in the total process of nature (it is a part of this process
in the depth of its individual and genetic age), and it holds up to
consciousness concentrated in an ego the mirror of the sensuous
fields through which it relates to its (imaginary) objects. To decon-
struct the space of illusion of perspectival intentional consciousness
can therefore mean two things. The destruction can mean (more
geometrico) cutting open the perspectival space of representation and
relating it to absolute mathematical space, a destruction that shows,
according to Spinozas formula, what the untrue idea of the image
(imago) is viewed in itself or in truth (see Ethics II, P32, P33, P35). The
aspectual image is related to the plan sections in which its genesis
is recorded. It is this critique of the distorted aspectual images of
perception by relating them genetically to geometric space without
a standpoint as whose paradigm the rational perspective is present
in the Ethics. However, the destruction can also be performed tem-
porally by relating the images of perception back to the perceiving
body in which the presynthetic differencethe outside, becoming,
substancefirst precipitates as a quality of sensation or as the raw
material for an objectivity to be synthesized.13 And it is this model
that steps out of the shadows of the paradigm of perspective in the
nineteenth century with the discovery of physiological vision and
light conceived energeticallyand no longer geometricallyand
leads to its temporalizing and, finally, to its collapse.
This twofoldspatialgeometric and energetictemporaltopic
of the critique of the image is present in classic modernity in various
theoretical garbs and formal realizations. Postcubist abstraction as a
whole is a destruction of the aspectual image in the name of an infin-
ity that bears various names: Malevichs nonobjective excitation,
Mondrians universal, and Duchamps four-dimensional bride
point to this dimension, which is translated in the arrangement of
their work into the nonetheless finite sight of the form (abstract im-
age or ready-made). Spinozas ontology is present behind the often
manifest and much discussed Bergsonianism and Nietzscheanism.
Mondrians conception here has an exemplary coherence. What
Mondrian calls the universal is not projected as an eidetic structure
beyond the image as the usual Platonizing interpretation of his
246 S E BASTI AN EGE NHOFER
work would like to have it. The universal is preobjective becoming,

the flood of intensity which is translated on the screen of the paint-
ing as well as in the subjects body into a colored manifestation in
an orderly way. The elements of this manifestation are no longer
dispersed by Mondrian in such a way that they reconfigure for the
gaze, like Seurats spectral colors, into a scenic, spatial image. After
the collapse of the perspectival structure of the image in cubism,
Mondrian conceives the paintings surface as the locus for the analy-
sis of those means of production of the illusion of the image that
are the primary, not further analyzable, and in this sense elementary
products of the translation of intensityof the resonance spectrum
of lightinto an extensive, qualitative phenomenon. Red, yellow,
and bluecontained within the structure of the orthogonal linear
grid and cut off from one another by the noncolors, white and light
grayare not only the end products of abstraction from a natural
appearance (of abstraction from constituted nature, natura naturata)
but are above all the primary points of contact or joints between the
flood of intensity and a qualitatively chromatic manifestation in the
space of representation. Mondrians critique of individual perspectival
image-consciousness, the breaking down of the limitations of the
representational imageof the morphoplastically limited form that
corresponds to the localization of finite vision in spacemust be con-
nected with its other, no longer geometric, but energetico-economic
side that conceives the image as an arrangement of production.
With Seurat, the laboring body has been transfigured into the
ideal geometric space of perspectival painting as the body whose
atomized time of labor precipitates on the screen of brush traces, but
also as the bodily eye that reconfigures a scenic phenomenal space
from the spectralized dots of color. The screen is still defined as a
section through the visual pyramid, but the section is moved forward
temporally into the moment when the manifold of resonances of
light is still approaching the eye, before the reflexes have formed in
the perceiving body that are the images in consciousness. Mondrians
work stands in the continuity of this determination of the locus of the
image between the energetic constitution of the presynthetic world
and the spatial phenomenon. The surface of the painting and the
living bodyand here I am tempted to call this body transcendental
are stretched as a membrane between the universal (intensity or the
noumenal difference) and the manifestation of the image, which is

not perspectival but nevertheless finitely extensive. The energetically
conceived infinite lies this side of the image, this side of the space of
manifestation. On the surface, it is translated into the unsplittable
primary colors, the poles of constitution of every possible visibility.
The abstract image suspends this translation process at the moment
of its primary production. It stops the manifesting primary colors
from flowing any further and mixing in phenomenal perspectival
space. Mondrians reference to Spinoza lies in this energetic and
dynamic determination of the image as the side of production of
(possible) visibility on the edge of noumenal intensity and not in
the adoration of the purported stasis of an eternal substance, of a
structural eidos behind the change of aspectual images.14
I describe this work of classical modernity on a critique of the
image as still epistemological because, although it determines the
image as the place of production of a visibility in analogy to the
living body, in which a confusion of affections is translated into the
space of distance and light of the visible world, it realizes this anal-
ogy still within the structural and eidetic moments of the image as
the form and model of representation and, despite the emissions
mentioned, not with respect to its material existence and produc-
tion. The painting comes into consideration above all as the locus
and bearer of a showing, not as itself something made and shown
under external conditions. But this is the case in postabstract art since
minimal art. If the work no longer makes available any inner room
for play, any zone freed of resistance for the interplay of visual signs
and for the constitution of meaning in this interplay, but itself, as an
object and material, is such a sign or ensemble of signs exposed to
the stream of causality in the profane world, then its material body
must become directly the bearer of its constitution of meaning or
its production of truth.
Let us firmly note the basic traits of this epochal difference be-
tween the painting of the first half of the century and postabstract
art since the 1960s. And to be as concrete as possible here, I will
compare four positions: Mondrian, Donald Judd, Michael Asher, and
Thomas Hirschhorn. The locus of Mondrians work, of the func-
tion of truth of his work, despite the image elements being brought
onto the surface and woven with the fine texture of the brush, is the
248 S EBASTI AN EGE NHOFER
phenomenal space of the painting. Its material conditions of existence

and production remain peripheral. The paintings material subjectile
is covered by the layer of its white grounding. The reverse, the frame,
the hanging remain unthematic, despite the envisaged architectural
integration. Plastic art is a free aspect of life, writes Mondrian at
the beginning of the Second World War. Not being bound by physical
and material conditions, it does not tolerate any oppression and can
resist it. It is disinterested; its only function is to show. It is for us
to see what it reveals.15 This freedom of painting is closely related
to the paintings ideality. The existence of the painting, its material
and economic realitypainting is cheap and technically primitiveis
consumed in the work of showing, in the fire of the phenomenon.
Abstraction has by no means extinguished this fire, say, to make the
concrete, positive materiality of its material means visible. Mondrians
destruction of the image is concerned solely with ensuring that this
fire no longer illuminates a perspectival space of depth and memory
but the space this side of the image-plane, which is structurally the
space of the future.
The elements manifesting themselves in Mondrians images
fieldthe blocks of pure elementary colors whose confluence into
the perspectival imaginary space of perception and the image is
prevented by the grid of orthogonal linesare, in minimal art, the
shown materials themselves exposed to real space, the Plexiglas
and metal plates of Judds specific objects. The minimal separa-
tion between material and phenomenon in the abstract painting
has collapsed. The material itself in the tenacity of its existence is
what is shownin the tenacity and duration of its existence and
especially, and paradoxically, in the temporal depth of this existence.
In a Plexiglas plate by Judd, the abstract labor sedimented in the
means of production, and the means of production of the means
of production, the congealed16 of past labor, are also exhibited as
invisible. In the sheer illegibility of the production process, in the
radical opacity of the materials presence, we see the repressed or
truncated dimension of sedimented time itself. Here, therefore,
the analysis must change registers, just as perception, although
unconsciously, has already changed and therefore, taken in itself,
remains aconceptual fascination. Here it is manifestly and explicitly
a matter of the conditions and the form of existence, of the material
and economic reality of the work, which is not to be produced in a

cheap and primitive fashion, but which, already in its phenomenal
qualities, in the homogeneity and smoothness of the materials, in
the stasis of visual space, presents itself as the incarnation of abstract
exchange value.17 The synchronicity of visual space from which any
indication of the sequential time of production has been expelled is
the sensuous scheme (in the Kantian sense) of the law of exchange.
The tension and openness of the minimalist situation is grounded
in its resonance with the fetishism of the commodity form. Its truth
is the truth of a symptom.
In his works of the 1970s, Michael Asher opened up this abstract
visual realitythe glass of real space ( Judd) in which the minimalist
situation is crystallizedto the dimension of its economic genesis. I
name two paradigmatic works: the exhibitions at the Galerie Heiner
Friedrich (Cologne, September 428, 1973) and at the Galleria Toselli
(Milan, September 13 to October 8, 1973).18 At the Galerie Friedrich,
Asher had the ceilings in all the rooms of the gallerythe exhibition
spaces, offices, kitchen, and lavatorypainted in the same color as
the floor and thus turned a partial function of the gallery, the func-
tion of exhibiting, against its overall economic function. All the rooms
with their contents and practical routines now stretched between
the equally large slabs of floor and ceiling, now in the same colors.
The abstract visibility, the emptiness of the exhibition space which
in normal operations is tied to turning toward the object exhibited
whose sale compensates the gallery for its product, the emptiness
of the space itself, was now guided into all the rooms, canceling
their functional separation. This self-exposition of the machine at
full throttle transforms the abstract visibility that otherwise is the
vanishing mediator in the exchange process into a moment of the
happening of the work. The false semblance of autonomy of the
work-objectthat (incomplete) secularized aura in which the gal-
lery envelops the commodified artworkturns into a moment of
the works truth-function through an explication of its genesis and
economic, no longer liturgical, function.
At the Galleria Toselli, Asher had the walls and ceiling of the gal-
lery, a broad room similar to a garage, freed of the many layers of
white paint from past years. Four days work by four workers with
sandblasting equipment exposed the material body of the gallery as
the bearer of visibility that has left its impression on the bearer itself.
At the moment of its exposition, this bearer becomes an image, an
historical image, a narrative about the material history of the place
that has been written down in a tableau of legible traces. This image,
however, is as a whole a trace or an index of the subtraction of the
white paint that otherwise provides the neutral background for the
object exhibited in the intermeshing execution of the function of
exhibiting and the exchange process. Four days sandblastingthis
time, the aggressiveness of this work and the gallerys economic
investment (which financed the work) are stacked up in the empty
room and indicated by the absence of the white paint, like Seurats
atomized work in the grains of sand of the spectral colors that occupy
his screen. What is shown is this absence. The space of visibility, the
empty space, has been fitted with a temporal index and defined as a
product. This is not a dematerialization of the work. The excess of
abstract visibility has repercussions for the totality of the material
situation. Ashers work transforms its place into a sculpture that
remains surrounded by the space of its current production, which
coincides with the space of its exhibition.
For both of Ashers works, the intricate relationship between time
and money in the economic realm is central. Time, counted time,
is the drive for the self-exposing machine that his interventions con-
struct on the foundations of the material situation and the historical
function of the gallery. With Mondrian, the material existence of the
painting is absorbed by the function of showing, by the phenomenon
of the image and its epistemological meaning. With Judd, the visual
phenomenon is stuck together with the existence of the object, and
the situation gains its truth in the moment of crisis, that is, in the
legibility of the symptom. With Asher, abstract visibility, which in
minimalism, has climbed out of the painting and been implicitly put
into a homology with an abstract exchange value and hits back at the
bearer of its real economic production. In this way, the paradigm of
exchange is intermeshed with the incommensurability of the work,
which withdraws radically from exchangeability and the concept
of value by not being a being. Ashers work is the happening of vis-
ibility of the material situation itself, the strife, to use Heideggers
word,19 between the transparency of visual space and the bearer
it comes up against, causing it to coagulate into an image and an
image-ground. (This applies to the naked Galleria Toselli but also

to the actions executed in the Galerie Friedrich, which, theatralized
by Ashers framing, become a performance.) This strife is coupled
with a disturbance to the exchange process. It is driven on or, to use
Heideggers word once again, it is instigated by the inference from
the gallerys showing function back to the gallerys body or the
material situation. For this inference, the economic determination
of the time of the happening of the work is essential. It is counted
time. It is neither the time of nature, daytime, or the time of year,
as in Judds permanent installations in Marfa in Texas, for instance,
his alternative to the exhibition situation in the white cube of the
gallery that is amalgamated with the exchange process, nor is it the
elastic experiential time of a viewer. It is the time of the duration of
an exhibition, the time of the actual production of the gallery that
both drives and limits the happening of the work. The temporal
limitation of the works happening is therefore an essential part of
its conception, of what I call the form of its existence. It prevents the
work from being mistaken for the mere appearance of the situation.
Through Ashers intervention, the situation has been transformed into
a machine in which the counted time of the exhibitions operation
remains short-circuited with its product, the nothingness of visibility.
This short circuit constitutes the truth function of the work.
The closer the position in historical timespace, the more dif-
ficult it is to delimit the general contours of a concept of the work.
So far, I have not sketched any genealogy of Hirschhorns work.
Apart from Mondrian, his points of contact lie elsewhere: in Beuyss
plastic work on the borderline between artistic and social form; in
Warhols machinism, which intermeshes the visual form of the work
with the structure of productive output, of the permanent and blind
work of livingThe machinery is always going. Even when you
sleep20and, from the first half of the century, in the collages by
Rodchenko, Heartfield, and Schwitters, turned toward the poles of
a hoped-for proletariat and a collapsing bourgeois public sphere.21
To locate his work within a topic of modernity, its relationship to
the simultaneously ascetic and materialist practices of the 1970s
nevertheless remains essential, for which Ashers empty rooms stand
here as paradigmatic examples.
The precarious materiality of Hirschhorns work is projected into
this empty space, which perhaps most recently posed the question
concerning the universal publicness of art this side of the element
of spectacle, a question forgotten during the 1980s. I ask myself
whether and how his work, through its existence and the form of
its existence, although bound to material and transportable but not
site-specific objects, has a character of happening analogous to Ashers
machinic arrangements, and whether it participates in an analogously
determined productivity. Of course, the poor materials and the
reclaimed primitivity of production as well as the appellative urgency
of the referenceshelp please!! I dont understand that!!22play
a crucial role here. The strife which in Ashers work runs through
the contours of the situation itself draws in Hirschhorns work the
outline of a material product that nevertheless refuses to take on
the ontological solidity and harmlessness of an object. How is this
refusal defined?
For Hirschhorn today and in the 1990s, it was not the question how
the representation or the imaginary in the work could be destroyed,
so to speak, as a surrogate, as was the case for Mondrian and classical
modern art. The element that needs to be dissolved analytically and
in which the work has to assert its form is today the penetrating vis-
ibility of the spectacle. Penetrating but nevertheless touching only one
layer of beingsthat is the paradoxical structure of the spectacular
presence that is constituted in the element of value equivalence as a
synchronous relationship of calculability of all points of space. This
visibility, which no longer has to be tied to and addressed to an eye,
is imposed on the supporting media of technical apparatus whose
substantial determination cannot be thought in an anthropological,
instrumental way, nor in a technical, medial way, but which has to
be conceived economically. (The hardware for making the world
into an image and an object is today in its substance above all the
capital invested in calculating machines.) The spectacular visibility is
assumed in the exemplary moment of minimal art as an element of
existenceof the material presenceof the artwork. With Asher
and here his work stands in a wider context of conceptual practices
critical of institutionsthe spectacular visibility is thematized as this
element and, by linking it again to its causes, determined as that which,
according to Spinozas formula, it is in truth or viewed in itself. 23
The matrix of this relinking is obviously no longer geometric space.
Modernity as a whole has made the transition from a mathematical

to a dynamic, from a spatial to a temporal, from a geometric to an
energetic conception of the element of representation. The trans-
formation of Spinozas mos geometricus into Marxs mos oeconomicus
is only one moment of this epistemological transformation.24 The
general element of calculation in which images are inscribed as the
expression of correlation of the elements points was, in Renaissance
perspective, geometric space. Modernity, and not only modern art,
has dynamized this element, has grasped it energetically and eco-
nomically. Rational perspective has lost its function as the paradigm
of artistic production of images and the critique of the image (and
returns in this function only mediated by photography) because it
no longer works as a hinge between the finite imaginary and the new,
economically fluidized ground of visibility. In the Renaissance, per-
spective was a technique (techn) for connecting the finite aspectual
image with its true causes, thus conceding its subjective untruth as
a genetic necessity and hence as objective truth. In this sense, as I
have said, for Spinoza, perspective becomes a methodological para-
digm. The modernity of the nineteenth century and the first half
of the twentieth century has performed, on the path outlined, the
materialization and dynamization of the elements of this genesis:
energetic light, physiological vision, the neuronal body are deter-
mined as the bearers of the imaginary space of the gaze, and to this
corresponds a transformation also of the genealogical analysis and
critique of the image by leading it back to the energetico-differential
constitution of the world prior to it forming in the transcendental
body into objectively existing nature. In the space of the spectacle, in
the image and space of the present, the supporting element of the
collective imaginary is no longer mathematical space or energetically
defined light. The bearer of spectacular visibility is the movement of
capital, and the space of the imaginary is the being itself as grasped
by the commodity form. The inscription of a resistance into this
structure must take other paths than the epistemological critique
of the image in classical modern art. The methodological or rather
strategic paradigm, however, remains the same: the explication of
the relationship of the false idea to its cause, the relationship of the
product to the dimension of production.
The place of illusion today is no longer the depth of perspectival
painting that abandons its means to the pull of illusion of the image
and ties the mind to a contemplation of the past, to the paradigm
of guilt and mourning. Mondrians painting is conceived as a resis-
tance against this pull. His lines have raked through the space of
retrospective illusion and extracted its pure elements. The presence
of the primary colors is asserted in the plane of the image as the
membrane between the past and the future. Hirschhorn does not
have to assert the materiality and presence of his work against the
space of representation in this sense. This space has been essentially
filled in since the 1960s. Rather he has to assert it in and against
the space of spectacular visibility. And this assertion can no longer
take the path of a condensation of value in the materials. Minimal art
understood and staged for the first time the economic substance
of the works presence as the medium of art production. After the
conceptual practices of the 1970s, which split this substance and
explicated it into a space of happening (for which Ashers work, to
my mind, is only the most radical example), it can no longer be a
matter of anticipating, in the style of mainstream art of the 1980s,
the value condensation in the artwork through its material beauty.
(The condensation of exchange value can correspond to the deter-
mination of the work as a concentrate of potentiated visibility, but
it remains essentially a contingency of speculation.) Hirschhorns
materials are taken from the realm of general production, from the
nonspecific, lower layer of this production in packaging materials
and mass media images. They remain resistant as these materials in
the use made of them. Like Mondrians colors, they do not mix; they
are not transformed into the illusion of another existence. On the
contrary, the cut and contrastive elements of Hirschhorns collages (for
that would be perhaps the proper generic concept also for his three-
dimensional works) stick firmly to each other. Their contrast keeps
them flat. The edges of the images from which often the contextual
embedding has been cut off tear also their referential depth into the
present. A pasted press photo is like one of Seurats brushstrokes or
Warhols silk screen shadows, the trace of the production process, the
notch that contact with the real leaves behind, not a documentary
opening to historical space. The visible surface of the work is the
servant of its contact with the world. This contact as such has to be
shapedthe outline of the trace, not the form of the product. Only
the outline defined in this way as the temporal edge of production

gives the material happening of the work the force of resistance to
assert itself in and against the spectacular realm of commodified
visibility. This resisting force is grounded in the nonsimultaneity, in
the heterochrony, of form and production.
This procedure does not negate the fact that money is the bearer
of this precarious existence, the projected ray that generates the
image or the form. This image emerges in its urgency, in its flicker-
ing on the screen of a present that cannot be conceived as framed
by an institution or even by the historical conditions. At this point,
Hirschhorns work is radically different from the institutional cri-
tique of the 1990s and the practices of artists such as Andrea Fraser
and Christian Philipp Mller. The place of projection, the place of
exposition, to use Duchamps basic term, is the contingency of the
situation. Therefore this material image is unstable. Or conversely,
it is this conception of the structure of production and the product
that is indicated in the manifest, dramatized instability of the material
image. In other words, Hirschhorns work, like Ashers, is strictly
nonarchitectural.
The precariousness is therefore not a specific feature of Hirschhorns
work whose existence is restricted in the chronological sense. It is
a mode of existence shared by all his works. Precarious form is the
name for the temporal outline that incorporates that other side of
the visually present form turned toward production. The essential
achievement of the artwork is this structurally reversed side of the
form, for this reversal is not a property of commodity fetishism alone
but of every product. The temporally (minted) edge of every present
form is turned structurally toward forgetting; it is the seam between
the present and forgetting, just as the spatial outline of disegno is the
seam between the visible extension of form and visibility without a
standpoint. The artworks achievement is not to undo this seam but
to turn it inside out so that evidence is shown of contact with the
outside or the incommensurable in the form. Giving a form that is
more than design is conceivable only as contact with the formless.
It is does not take place in the element of an already smooth, syn-
thetic presence that has been freed of resistance but in contact with
the presynthetic, in the experience of resistance from the outside.
The precarious form is the form that the artwork has assumed, as
figure 9.1. Thomas Hirschhorn, Spinoza Monument, Amsterdam, 1999. Copy-

right Thomas Hirschhorn.
Hirschhorn says, as a tool for experiencing reality in going through

this experience. It is not the form of a recognizable object but the
blind point of contact of the tool with the real that is only translated
into a form and image by going through the experience.
The achievement of the work is to enter this plane of immanence
with the formless or the real and to inscribe in it a figure of resis-
tance in which a world and the images reflections of the world are
first constituted. In this structure, there is an affinity with Spinozan
thinking, which thinks and affirms the finitude of the mode (of finite
life) and the imagistic forms under which the infinite substance or
the outside shows itself to finite life as an expression of the infinite.
In this sense, all of Hirschhorns works have as much and as little to
do with Spinoza as the 1999 Spinoza Monument realized in a group
exhibition, Midnight Walkers and City Sleepers, in the red-light dis-
trict of Amsterdam (see Figure 9.1). There is no Spinozan influence
on Hirschhorns work, no immediate effect of reading. The affinity
lies in the process of formation, in the form of material existence of
figure 9.2. Thomas Hirschhorn, Spinoza Monument, Amsterdam, 1999. Copy-

right Thomas Hirschhorn.
the works themselves. The Spinoza Monument has given this material
happening the plastic form that cites in the simplest way the monu-
ments memorial function: statue and name on the rock made of
cardboard that emerges from an Amsterdam canal. But the memorial
function is put in brackets; it is a ready-made function that the layer
of the works precarious existence slips on. The books in the vendors
tray, the stuck-on excerpts of text, the video in which Hirschhorn
reads the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, are elements for
activating this existence, moments of excess or outflow. The illumi-
nation of the statue with integrated neon tubes whose current, like
that for the television set, was drawn from a neighboring sex shop
underlines this temporal activity and connects the monument to it
is actual, current surroundings. Two flags, one red and one green,
poles of the battery, bear the labels desire and pleasure. Their
definitions, derived from The Definitions of the Emotions in Ethics
III, are affixed to the foot of the flagpoles (see Figure 9.2). I: Desire
(cupiditas) is the very essence of man insofar as it is conceived as
determined to any action from any given affection of itself. II:

Pleasure (laetitia) is mans transition from a state of less perfection
to a state of greater perfection. In the first sketch for the project,
passion and reason were planned, which would have prescribed
a dialectical reading: the critical corrective intervention of thinking
into the world of passions and images. This dialectic remains implied
in the relationship between desire and pleasure. The conatus with
which each thing endeavors to persist in its own being is nothing
but the actual essence of the thing itself (Ethics III, P7). Desire is
the expression of this endeavor or drive (appetitus), insofar that it is
accompanied by consciousness thereof (Ethics III, P9S). The struc-
ture of desire is therefore already enclosed within the horizon of the
world in which the infinite substance or the outside is reflected in the
form of an image. Desire as a drive accompanied by consciousness
is directed toward a defined object in which the total movement of
finite lifethe conatus that unconsciously participates in the infinite
being of natureis bound to a particular aim. Only in being bound
to the outline of the particular object, to the imago of what is held
to be good because one strives for it (Ethics III, P9S), can the subjects
finitude drift off into the circuit of illusions and murky passions that
succumb to the spell of images. The artwork is an arrangement that
conceives this outline in its correlation with the finitude of imagistic
representation, that is, of the subjects consciousness and desire,
and turns this outline inside out, relating it to the infinite. It does not
destroy the image and desire but displaces the outline into the space
of its necessary genesis. It conceives the object of desire once again
as the expression of desiring life itself. Pleasure, the transition from
a state of less perfection to a state of greater perfection, is the affect
that accompanies this correction, the focusing of the lens and the
release of productive life from the images spell.
Notes
1 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley
(San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 98ff. The essence of
the mode in turn is a degree of power, a part of the divine power,
i.e., an intensive part or a degree of intensity. This quote comes
the lemma on power (puissance or potentia). See Ethics III, P79.
All references to Spinozas writings are to Complete Works, trans.
Samuel Shirley, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett,
2002).
2 See esp. the outline within the history of ideas in Henri Bergson,
Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood Press, 1975), chap. 4, where Bergson makes clear the homol-
ogy of the concept of becoming (dure or lan vital) with Spinozas
natura naturans.
3 This layer of presence is not only the presence of perception and
consciousness but presence as such: the limiting layer of the co-
actuality of forces in the transition between that which already was
and that which is not yet.
4 On the correlation between explication and canceling out (of the
noumenal difference in the phenomenon, of intensity in quality
and extension), see Gilles Deleuze, Asymmetrical Synthesis of the
Sensible, in Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994), esp. 23940.
5 See Alain Badious analysis of structure in Spinozas Closed Ontol-
ogy, in Theoretical Writings, ed. and trans. Ray Brassier and Alberto
Toscano, 9193 (London: Continuum, 2004).
6 Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinozas Meta-
physics and Politics, trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University
of Minneapolis Press, 1991).
7 Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism, trans. Grahame Lock (Lon-
don: NLB, 1976); Pierre Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris: Maspero,
1979); see also Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Marx: Man-in-Nature
and the Science of Redemption, in Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol.
3, The Adventures of Immanence, 78103 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1989), and Eugene Holland, Spinoza and Marx,
Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice 2,
no. 1 (1998), http://clogic.eserver.org/21/holland.html.
260 S EBASTI AN EGE NHOFER
8 Entretien Avec Thomas Hirschhorn Ralis Par M. Keta, S. Keta,

K. Keta, N. Keta, Ch. Soumbounou, K. Harra et M. Niakate, Le
Journal des Laboratoires 2 ( June 2004), quoted in Thomas Hirschhorn
Muse Prcaire Albinet (Paris: ditions Xavier Barral/Les Laboratoires
dAubervilliers, 2005).
9 See, e.g., Max Horkheimer, Kants Philosophie und die Auf klrung,
in Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft, 20315 (Frankfurt, Ger-
many: Fischer, 1997), esp. 209. [Translators note: This is one of
the four chapters that were omitted in the English translation of
Horkheimers Critique of Instrumental Reason.]
10 Michel Foucault saw this flesh, which is also the flesh (chair) in
which the late Merleau-Ponty grounded Husserlian phenomenology,
in the blurred image in the mirror of Velazquezs Menias, which
demands a bodily presence in the place of the king which was
once occupied by the transcendental cogito. The eye made of flesh
that coagulates in the scientistic climate of the nineteenth century
around the focal point of perspective painting is the crystallized
seed of Foucaults human being, who entered the stage of the
minimalist situation as the viewersubject in the 1960s (and who,
in the meantime, in relational aesthetics, also speaks and eats). The
clouding of the space of representation runs parallel in the history
of painting precisely with the incarnation of the subject in its finite
empiricity. See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology
of the Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 2002), esp. chap.9.
11 John Cage, On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work, in
Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Uni-
versity Press, 1961), 102.
12 See Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza and Us, in Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical
Philosophy, 12230.
13 Ones own perceiving body is, as Spinoza formulated with pointed
emphasis and clarity, the object of the idea constituting the human
mind ... and nothing else (Ethics II, P13). As he explained further
in Part II, the subject does not adequately recognize this body that is
the bearer of its consciousness (Ethics II, P19, P23, P24). The living
body is the mirror for the images of the world (and of itself as an
object in the world). It conceals itself for the subject before these
perspectival images that hollow out its mirroring substance and
relativize it into a differential of appearances.
14 For more detail on this Spinozan and Deleuzian analysis of Mond-

rian, see Sebastian Egenhofer, Die Abstraktion und die Topik des
Imaginren, in Struktur, Figur, Kontur: Abstraktion in Kunst und Le-
benswissenschaften, ed. Claudia Blmle and Armin Schfer, 27197
(Berlin: diaphanes, 2007).
15 Piet Mondrian, Liberation from Oppression in Art and Life, under
the earlier title Art Shows the Evil of Nazi and Soviet Oppressive
Tendencies (193940), in The New ArtThe New Life: The Collected
Writings of Piet Mondrian, trans. and ed. Harry Holtzmann and
Martin S. James (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1986), 320.
16 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben
Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1977), 128.
17 The best analysis of Judds specific objects remains Karl Bev-
eridge and Ian Burn, Don Judd, The Fox 2 (1975): 12842. The
general model of a semiology of material that deciphers its hidden
historicityits economic realitycan, of course, be found in Ro-
land Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Vintage,
1993).
18 See Michael Asher, Writings 197383 on Works 196979, ed. Benjamin
H.D. Buchloh (Halifax, N.S., Canada: Press of the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design), 8294.
19 Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, in Basic Writ-
ings, rev. ed., ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 2000),
180ff.
20 Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back
Again) (San Diego, Calif.: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, 1975), 96.
21 See Benjamin Buchloch, Thomas Hirschhorn: Lay Out Sculpture
and Display Diagrams, in Thomas Hirschhorn, 4193 (London: Phai-
don, 2004), and Buchloch, An Interview with Thomas Hirschhorn,
October 113 (2005): 77100.
22 See Thomas Hirschhorn, Les Plaintifs, les btes, les politiques (Geneva,
Switzerland: Cenre genevois de Gravure Contemporaine, 1995). (It
is Hirschhorns atlas, as Buchloch writes in Thomas Hirschhorn,
52.)
23 See n. 13. On the relinking of the false idea to its causes as the
method of Spinozas epistemological critique, see Deleuze, Spinoza:
Practical Philosophy.
24 See Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2:98.
10
Spinoza, Ratiocination,
and Art
anthony uhlmann
samuel beckett made use of Spinoza on a number of occasions and

copied the following lines into his notes of his reading of Wilhelm
Windelbands A History of Western Philosophy: The order of ideas
[for Spinoza] is conceived as identical with order of things.1 It is
apparent why such an idea would appeal to a writer: if literature is
understood to involve a kind of thinking, to be, that is, a kind of
thought, then an immediate connection between events that are
described and some process of thinking is attractive.
Yet there is a clear problem when one comes to consider the
nature of the interaction between things and ideas in Spinoza, at
least from the point of view of literature, which concerns itself with
the creation of particular sensual experiences: that is, the problem,
at the heart of the Ethics, of the nature of the relationship between
natura naturans and natura naturatathe relation between substance,
as an infinite being whose essence involves existence, and modes,
finite beings whose existence, at least when imagined through the
first kind of knowledge given to us by our senses, appears to be
contingent.2
In attempting to draw out how the problem might shed light
on the relationship between literature and thinking, I will consider
three interconnected positions from the Ethics: first, how the idea is
defined not to relate directly to words or images but to be, in effect,
the process of understanding itself; second, how thinkingthat is,
the first, second, and third kinds of knowledgeis identified with
263
264 A NTHONY UHLM AN N
the idea of the relation, which is also relevant to the existence of the
bodies, which are conceived through mutual relations or ratios; and
finally, how it becomes possible to develop an understanding of the
essence of particular things through the third kind of knowledge,
and how this process of development might be understood to in-
volve a kind of creation whose concept sheds light on processes of
creation in the arts.
Philosophers such as Edwin Curley, Pierre Macheray, and Gilles
Deleuze have long noticed that Spinoza is a philosopher who seems to
have a special appeal to nonphilosophers, and to poets and novelists,
in particular. Curley lists Novalis, Heine, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Shelley, and George Eliot.3 On an initial reading, one might wonder
why this would be so. There is little direct mention of the arts in the
Ethics: music is briefly used as an example of an object that might
be either good, bad, or indifferent to different people in different
circumstances (Spinoza, Ethics VI, preface). Yet the circle that sur-
rounded Spinoza formed a group, Nil Volentibus Arduum, discussing
artistic practice,4 and this offers evidence of the early recognition of
the possible usefulness of his system for the arts.
Still, there are key problems that emerge when one comes to
think about art through the Ethics. If one believes that works of
art function, at least in part, through the production of affects and
sensations, that they form beings of sensation that produce affects
in usas Deleuze and Guattari contend in What Is Philosophy?, for
examplethen how can this be reconciled with Spinoza?5 For Spi-
noza, affects and sensations pertain to the first kind of knowledge,
the imagination, and he clearly states that this kind of knowledge is
the sole cause of error (see Ethics II, P41). Second, if one wishes to
contend that literature develops a kind of thinking, one immediately
confronts the further obstacle provided by Spinozas clear statement
in Part II, Proposition 49, to the effect that images and words (which,
when one remembers that images for Spinoza involve every kind of
sensual material, are necessary to the production of any work of art)
only concern the body and are not related to thought:
Thought ... does not at all involve the concept of extension....

An idea (since it is a mode of thinking) consists neither in the
image of anything, nor in words. For the essence of words and
SPINOZA, RATIOCINATION, AND ART 265
images is constituted only by corporeal motions, which do not at

all involve the concept of thought.
Yet, notwithstanding these apparent problems, I would contend that

one does not have to read Spinoza against the grain to find material
that might be of use to artists.
Ideas are not identified with words or images; rather the idea is the
very process of understanding. Spinoza insists on this point, making
it more than once, in more than one way, over a number of proposi-
tions in Part II. In the Scholium to Proposition 43, he states:
To have a true idea means nothing other than knowing a thing

perfectly, or in the best way. And of course no one can doubt this
unless he thinks that an idea is something mute, like a picture on
a tablet, and not a mode of thinking, viz. the very [act of ] under-
standing. And I ask, who can know that he understands some thing
unless he first understands it? I.e., who can know that he is certain
about some thing unless he is first certain about it?
The metaphors are extremely interesting here: a picture on a tablet,

a painting, for example, is thought of as mute, or as Shirley trans-
lates it, dumb in the sense of mute.6 Again, such reasoning seems,
initially, unpromising for someone interested in art: here the image
itself does not speak. Yet it is worth trying to attend to the nature of
the contrast. The idea must, in some sense, speak to us directly. It is
the very act of understanding, and we immediately understand that
we understand. The idea, then, as conceived here, already carries
something of the third kind of knowledge: it strikes us immediately
and intuitively. Might this mean we do not come to think or learn
to think; that rather, insofar as we understand, we are already in
thought? This tautological definition is only so helpful.
It would no doubt be possible to attempt to understand Spinozas
point more fully by turning to the ideas of some of those who in-
fluenced his own work: the ancient Stoics, for example, whose work
Spinoza knew through his reading of Justus Lipsius, who published
epitomes of the Stoic doctrines on ethics and physics at the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century.7 The Stoics distinguished between
bodies and incorporeals, and though words are bodies because
they pass as sound through the air or are written down, meaning or
sense itself is not in the words; rather meaning is attributed to the
words and is incorporeal.8 For Spinoza, the word is not adequate or
necessary to the idea; that is, ideas both exceed and precede the hu-
man signs that seek to relate them. I would argue that one can link
artistic thinking to this very excess: rather than it being the kind of
sign system that seeks to link signs as precisely as possible to their
intended meanings, like mathematics or an ideal rational language
such as that imagined by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus, art requires
us to understand what is not present in, or goes beyond, the signi-
fier, what is in the idea rather than in the word.9 Paradoxically, then,
rather than this inhibiting someone who writes literature, it might
very well be understood to open possibilities: that words might be
so related that they invoke moments of immediate understanding
in a reader, moments of understanding that are intended to exceed
the expression of the words, getting beyond words through words,
by making use of the music of language or powerful images, for
example. In a famous letter to Vita Sackville-West of March 16,
1926, Virginia Woolf outlines something of her understanding of
the process of creation in art:
As for the mot juste, you are quite wrong. Style is a very simple
matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you cant use the
wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half
the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and
cant dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is
very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words.
A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it
makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief )
one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing
apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles
in the mind, it makes words to fit it: But no doubt I shall think
differently next year.10
What Woolf is describing comes from sensations and feelingsit is

physically sensed. Yet it is also sensed in that it is understood. First,
as we will see, feeling is not only involved in the first kind of knowl-
edge but also in the third kind. Second, though Spinoza states that
images and words are only related to bodies and not thought, it is
nevertheless clear, through his system, that there would necessarily
be an idea parallel to an image, an idea parallel to a word. Parallel
lines, of course, at least in Euclidean geometry, do not meet. One fails
to see how they might be related, unless one understands relation
itself to involve the parallel, a gap, a ratio, a proportion that persists
and resonates. Pythagoras not only discovered certain mathemati-
cal laws through ratios but also immediately applied these to the
art of music.
I want to argue that for Spinoza, relation itself is crucial to the
generation of any kind of human thought, including thinking in the
arts, which, too, proceeds through relations, that is, if we understand
relation to involve a kind of linking or connection that proceeds across
gaps, urging flashes of insight to emerge, to speak from ourselves
to the mute tableau, as a lightening flash leaps from the sky to the
ground or a signal jumps across a synapse.
The term relation itself is immediately tied to thought in Spinoza:
a core meaning of the word ratio itself is reason, or more generally,
thought, as in the English word ratiocination. A ratio, in turn, is a
relation between things. A definition in scientific terms of ratio is the
quantitative relation between two amounts showing the number of
times one value contains or is contained within the other (Oxford
English Dictionary). Furthermore, it is the ratio of speeds and slow-
nesses that defines the particular nature of each body; to put this
another way, each body has its own logic.
Yet the identification of ratio, or relation and thought, is clarified
when we turn to Spinozas definitions of the three kinds of knowl-
edge. In Proposition 40 of Part II, he states that he can explain each
kind through a single example:
Suppose there are three numbers, and the problem is to find a

fourth which is to the third as the second is to the first. Merchants
do not hesitate to multiply the second by the third, and divide the
product by the first, because they have not yet forgotten what they
heard from their teacher without any demonstration, or because
they have often found this in the simplest numbers, or from the
force of the Demonstration of P7 in Bk. VII of Euclid, viz. from
the property of proportionals. But in the simplest numbers none
268 A NTHONY UHLM A NN
of this is necessary. Given the numbers 1, 2, and 3, no one fails

to see that the fourth proportional number is 6and we see this
much more clearly because we infer the fourth number from the
ratio which, in one glance, we see the first number to have to the
second.
The use of ratio, or mutual relation, as the material for the example
here is not accidental; rather relation, ratio, and proportion inhabit
thought itself. The first kind of knowledge commonly involves the
association of ideas. Spinoza offers many examples of this when he
comes to consider the nature of the affects: we connect, through
the imagination, an affect or emotion with an external cause. For
example, love is the affect of joy related to the idea of an exterior
cause. In the example cited earlier, the merchants might come to the
correct answer via the first kind of knowledge because they associate
the response to the problem with a formula they have learned by
rote (without adequately understanding how it might work). The
second kind of knowledge would be made use of by someone who
understood common notions such as those described by Euclid in
his Elements. This person has read Euclid and been convinced by, in
Spinozas words, the force of the Demonstration; that is, he or
she has, through the intellect, understood a process of causation,
and such a process is, in effect, nothing other than a set of necessary
interrelations. Through the third kind of knowledge, however, no set
of associations needs to be triggered, no logical sequence needs to
be traced; rather one understands the relation of terms immediately,
with an intuitive understanding that grasps the relations involved
as understanding. Intuition, that is, is also a kind of relation, but
one in which the related termsthe thing perceived and the thing
understoodinvolve what might almost be thought to be an iden-
tification; to put this another way, one is adequate to the other.
It remains to be seen, then, how this notion of thought as relation
might be brought into contact with artistic practices. In discussing
Film, Samuel Becketts work for cinema, Gilles Deleuze contends that
Beckett allows us to recognize key potentials of the filmic medium
because he exhausts or negates those elements.11 The same prin-
ciple of exhaustion or negation might be seen in Becketts aesthetic
writings, in which he develops the concept of nonrelation in art,
which he opposes to an artistic tradition that, he states, has always

emphasized relation and the power of relation.
In his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Beckett describes
an aesthetic theory that emphasizes the connections or relations be-
tween things rather than the nature of those things themselves.12 In
a later letter to Georges Duthuit (written in 1949), Beckett outlines
a somewhat different aesthetic understanding, one that emphasizes
non-relation or the refusal to fully draw connections or relationships.
Beckett states:
As far as Im concerned, Bram [van Velde]s painting ... is new

because it is the first to repudiate relation in all its forms. It is not
the relation with this or that order of encounter that he refuses,
but the state of being quite simply in relation full stop, the state
of being in front of.... The break with the outside world implies
the break with the inside.... Im not saying that he doesnt search
to re-establish correspondence. What is important is that he does
not manage to.13
In Peintres de lEmpchement (first published in 1948), Beckett

states that all works of art have involved the readjustment of the
relation between subject and object,14 a relation that he claims has
now broken down. He announced this crisis over a decade before and
prior to World War II in 1934 in another review, Recent Irish Poetry,
which can also be found in Disjecta. Elsewhere I have argued in detail
how Beckett moves from making clear links in his works through
allusion and other means to occluding the element that would link
the terms, while still offering terms that cry out to be related.15 Such
a process of occlusion, or an insistence on gaps, however, differs in
degree rather than kind from other modes of artistic thinking.
That is, the insistence on gaps between relatable terms has a
long history in art. Stephen Greenblatt, for example, claims that
something happens to Shakespeares artistic method around the
time he writes Hamlet:
Shakespeare found that he could immeasurably deepen the effect

of his plays, that he could provoke in the audience ... a peculiarly
passionate intensity of response, if he took out a key explanatory
270 ANTHONY UHLM ANN
element, thereby occluding the rationale, motivation, or ethical

principle that accounted for the action that was to unfold. The
principle was not the making of a riddle to be solved, but the cre-
ation of a strategic opacity. This opacity ... released an enormous
energy that had been at least partially blocked or contained by
familiar, reassuring explanations.16
One kind of artistic practice, developed to a high degree by Beckett,

is to leave gaps between and within the subjects who perceive and
the objects that are presented. Such gaps might be understood to
involve, to cite Deleuze from his essay on Marcel Proust, the pro-
cess of leading to thought rather than thinking;17 that is, in art, the
relation still has to be drawn, has not yet been fully drawn, and we
need to think in attempting to bridge the gap.
Approaching Becketts problem of the relation of subject and
object through Spinoza, though moving away from Spinozas termi-
nology, one might consider the first kind of knowledge in Spinoza
to be subjective knowledge: Spinoza states that the affections in our
bodies and affects in our minds that are caused by external bodies tell
us more about the nature of our own bodies than about the nature
of the external objects. So, too, again moving away from Spinozas
terminology, the second kind of knowledge, the intellect, which
works through common notions that allow us to adequately un-
derstand general things but not particular things, might be thought
to be objective.
A sophisticated understanding of this relation between kinds of
thought (the imagination and the intellect) can be found in ideas
attributed to the French post-Impressionist painter Paul Czanne,
who develops the concept of the sensation to describe thinking
in painting and argues for the possibility of a logic of organized
sensations.18
Whereas the idea of an impression, for the French Impression-
ists, carries the sense of a passive reflection, with nature impressing
its image on the artist, who then faithfully records the moment,
sensation involves a complex process of interaction that is more
active than passive. The sensation is projected by an external nature
and is registered by an internal nature; that is, the sensation is both
in the image received and in the artists response to that image.
Furthermore, a sensation analogous to that received from the world

is then reprojected by the artist via a process of mental organization
or composition and the brushstrokes that correspond to and build
up the new sensation on the canvas. The sensations in turn inhere in
the canvas, where they are able to be received by viewers. Joaquim
Gasquet reports Czanne as stating that
the landscape is reflected, humanized, rationalized within me. I

objectivize it, project it, fix it on my canvas.... It may sound like
nonsense, but I would see myself as the subjective consciousness
of that landscape, and my canvas as its objective consciousness.19
For Czanne, the artist needs to become un-self-conscious to be the

subjective feeling of the other. This in turn develops a new interaction
of the first and second kinds of knowledge around an understand-
ing of the object:
There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each
of them should aid the other. It is necessary to work at their mu-
tual development, in the eye by looking at nature, in the mind
by the logic of organized sensations which provides the means
of expression.20
There is no lack of thought involved in this concept of sensation;

rather the sensation is thought, but not necessarily conscious thought
or thought mediated through language.
As we have seen, the problem with the first kind of knowledge
is that our affects merely describe the affections of our body, which,
in affecting us with joy or sadness, only tell us whether a thing per-
ceived increases or decreases our power of action. It is important
to recognize, however, that artistic expression involves a thinking
of, as much as through, the imagination; that is, art attempts to
understand what Czanne calls the real: the experience of sensa-
tion. Reinterpreting a long tradition in thinking about the nature
of the relation between the lives of philosophers and their works,
Bruno Clment has recently argued that philosophy moves from
the particular to the universal; that is, in Spinozas terms, the affects
of the first kind of knowledge are rendered abstract and developed
272 ANTHONY UHLM ANN
into material that might be manipulated through the second kind.21

One might argue, again in relation to a long tradition, that art, on
the contrary, achieves identification with each reader or viewer in
turn affected by the work; that is, an understanding is developed
not through an effort to convert things to common notions but by
making a particular experience available to others who might adapt
it to their own worldviews.
Let us return to the subjectobject relation, or gap, again. We
see through a cross-reflection between the first and second kinds
of knowledge, not only the other as potentially ourselves (which is
still only a capacity of the imagination), but the possibility of un-
derstanding the nature of the causes that produce that other; that
is, we are offered subjective and objective understandings at once:
we are allowed to be an alien mode while grasping the causes that
bring that mode about. Yet this is not done through clear, logical
relations; rather the logic of sensations developed in art requires
gaps that lead to thought in the effort to bridge the gap.
I will end with one last example. In William Faulkners novel The
Sound and the Fury, we are given four narratives with four narrators.22
The first three of these are first person and recount the thoughts of
each narrator, whereas the fourth is a third-person narrator whom
Faulkner later identified with himself as author. The first three are
Benjy, a mentally disabled man, fixed at a mental age of about two
or three, who thinks only by making associations of images and so
has no concept of time or the narrative relation this concept allows
and who finds only one person, his sister Caddy, who truly loves
him; Quentin, his brother, a young man who also deeply loves Caddy
and who is riddled with guilt because of the events that lead to her
disgrace and who, in consequence, is about to commit suicide; Jason,
their brother, who feels intense hatred toward his brothers, Caddy,
and Caddys daughter (named Quentin, after her uncle, whom
some wrongly believe to have been her father) and whose resent-
ment reaches a crescendo through the events he relates. Numerous
gaps are left in the narrative, and we are forced to make relations
between the different fragments within the story to reconstruct the
various lines of causation at play. Some of these connections are
made consciously and some are sensed; that is, a system of answering
motifs generates resonance and harmony across or through gaps in
the relation, creating the sensation of understanding. The work chal-

lenges us to understand but does not allow us to understand through
the intellect alone. Rather it leads us toward a sense, a feeling, and
through the complex interrelations it establishes, it creates a sense of
the meaningful, which is identified with a feeling of understanding;
that is, we sense the essence of what is at stake.
Feeling does not begin and end with the first kind of knowledge
in Spinoza; rather the feeling of understanding is apparent in the
intuition that constitutes the third kind of knowledge, an intuition
that proceeds from an immediate understanding of elements of the
essence of Gods attributes to the understanding of any number of
other things, including particular things insofar as these are under-
stood to be eternal modes of thinking, or essences:
Though it is impossible that we should recollect that we existed

before the Bodysince there cannot be any traces of this in the
body, and eternity can neither be defined by time nor have any
relation to timestill, we feel and know by experience that we
are eternal. For the Mind feels those things that it conceives in
understanding no less than those it has in the memory. For the
eyes of the mind, by which it sees and observes things, are the
demonstrations themselves. (Spinoza, Ethics V, P23)
Intuition, then, also involves affect. The adequate idea, the essence,
involves a felt identification of a perception and an understanding.
Art, in composing relations between the first, second, and third
kinds of knowledge, can offer us an image of a particular essence
of thinking.
Notes
1 Anthony Cordingley, Beckett and Lordre naturel: The Universal
Grammar of Comment cest/How It Is, in All Sturm and No Drang:
Beckett and Romanticism, Beckett at Reading 2006, Samuel Beckett
Today/Aujourdhui 18 (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2007),
189.
2 All references to the Ethics are to the Curley edition: Benedictus de
Spinoza, The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Edwin
Curley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
3 Ibid., 402.
4 Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), 294.
5 Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh
Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994).
6 Benedictus de Spinoza, Complete Works, trans. Samuel Shirley, ed.
Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2002).
7 See Jason Lewis Saunders, Justus Lipsius: The Philosophy of Renaissance
Stoicism (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1955); see also Jacqueline
Lagre, Juste Lipse: La Restauration du Stocisme, tude et Traductions
de divers traits Stociens (Paris: Vrin, 1994).
8 mile Brhier, La thorie des incorporels dans lancien stocisme (Paris:
Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1997 [1908]), 15.
9 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F.
Pears and B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1995).
10 Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 3, ed. Nigel Nicolson
and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1980), 247.
11 Gilles Deleuze, The Greatest Irish Film, in Essays Critical and
Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, 2326 (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
12 Samuel Beckett, Dream of Fair to Middling Women (New York: Arcade,
1993 [1932]).
13 Samuel Beckett, Letter to Georges Duthuit, 910 March 1949,
trans. Walter Redfern, in Beckett after Beckett, ed. S.E. Gontarski
and Anthony Uhlmann (Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
2006), 19.
14 Samuel Beckett, Disjecta, ed. Ruby Cohn (London: Calder, 1983), 137.
15 Anthony Uhlmann, Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3664.
16 Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became
Shakespeare (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), 32324.
17 Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard (Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 94100.
18 Emile Bernard, as cited in Richard Kendall, ed., Czanne by Himself:
Drawings, Paintings, Writings (London: Macdonald Orbis, 1988), 299.
19 Joaquim Gasquet, Czanne: A Memoir with Conversations, trans.
Christopher Pemberton (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991),
150.
20 Bernard, as cited in Kendall, Czanne by Himself, 299.
21 Bruno Clment, Le rcit de la mthode (Paris: Seuil, 2005).
22 William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, ed. David Minter (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1994).
11
An Inter-action: Rembrandt
and Spinoza
mieke bal and dimitris vardoulakis
An (Im)possible Relation
A number of common elements bind Rembrandt and Spinoza.1 First,
Spinozas materialism can be likened to Rembrandts realism. In this
view, the individuality of the painters figures would demonstrate
the philosophers insistence on the innumerable modes of being.
Second, the psychological depth of the figures appearance in the
paintings can be an expression of mans unity of body and soul. Third,
both shared an interest in the relation between actions and passions.
Thus Spinozas dynamic conception of desire could be embodied
in Rembrandts depiction of continuity and change within figures,
which he depicted as in a present moment replete with a past and
ready to step into the future. Furthermore, Rembrandts interest in
the lower classes might recall Spinozas grounding of democracy in
the multitude. Also, both shared a keen desire for freedom, neither
traveled abroad, and both opposed religious dogmatism. This is the
common view of the relation between the two.
Establishing Spinoza and Rembrandts relation remains fraught
with difficulties, regardless of their common elements. On one
hand, most attempts to link Spinoza and Rembrandt to date start
from the fact they were neighbors. Rembrandt lived in Amsterdams
Jewish quarter, one block away from the young Spinoza, from
1640 to 1656that is, until the year of Spinozas excommunication
and expulsion from the Jewish community. Such attempts note in
277
278 M I E KE BAL AND DIMITRIS VARDO ULAKIS
addition that Manasseh ben Israel, Rembrandts friend whose portrait

he painted, was also Spinozas teacher at the synagogue.2 However,
such circumstantial biographical information tends to give rise to
fanciful theories, such as Spinoza purportedly having studied draw-
ing under the older master. The inability to find a concrete point
of convergence between them, despite their physical proximity, has
tempted commentators to reduce their relation to a clich about the
relation between philosophy and art. Clearly, then, their personal
biographies are an inadequate starting point for putting Rembrandt
and Spinoza into contact.3
The affirmation of their relation on conceptual grounds also
encounters a stumbling block. This is a passing but significant ob-
servation by Deleuze. He describes the infinite abundance of un-
interrupted relations that characterize Spinozas conception of the
modes of existence in terms of color relations, whose main feature
is the abandonment of any tonal hierarchy. As a consequence, the
relation between color and shadow is abolished in favor of continu-
ous interaction between colors: Modes [in Spinoza], as projections
of light, are also colors, coloring causes. Colors enter into relations
of complementarity and contrast, which means that each of them,
at the limit, reconstitutes the whole... . In this way, a difference in
kind is established between color and shadow, between the coloring cause
and the effect of shadow: the first adequately delimits the light, while
the second abolishes it in the inadequate. This assertion directly
undercuts any conceptual affinity between Spinoza and the master
of chiaroscuro, Rembrandt. Indeed, as Deleuze immediately as-
serts, Vermeer is said to have replaced chiaroscuro by the comple-
mentarity and contrast of colors ... and in [this] Spinoza remains
infinitely closer to Vermeer than to Rembrandt.4 The uninterrupted
relationality the modes of existence exemplify indicates for Deleuze
an intellectual rupture between Spinoza and Rembrandt, a relation
that is impossible to affirm.
Instead of privileging the continuous expressivity of the plane
of existence, as Deleuze does, however, we lay the emphasis on the
points in Spinozas philosophy where a rupture or interruption is
manifest. We are curious to see how such (dis)junctures or hinges
affect the thinking of the single immutable substance. From the
side of Rembrandt, we seek an analogous rupture or interruption
AN INTER-ACTION: REMBRANDT AND SPINOZA 279
constitutive of his art. In other words, interruption, as a concept and

as a praxis, could be used to broach the relation between Rembrandt
and Spinoza. In that case, the impossibility of their relation would be
nothing moreand nothing lessthan the impossible unity between
philosophical contemplation and artistic endeavor, the discontinuous
relation between the realm of essences and the plane of existence.
But then, their relation will not be impossible in any simple sense
any longer; rather it will be (im)possible, a possibility that cannot
be simply stated. It will rather have to be produced as an effect of
their shared intellectual outlookan outlook determined by those
points of interruption and discontinuity. It is this (im)possibility that
will concern us here.
We will show this relation between Rembrandt and Spinoza
first by indicating how the presentthe nowis relevant to an un-
derstanding of their cultural significance, then by illustrating that
significance with reference to Rembrandts work, followed by sug-
gesting that Spinozas scant references to art are nevertheless crucial
in presenting the cultural politics of his philosophy. This (im)possible
relation, then, will display an inter-action between the painter and
the philosopher as well as between their respective disciplines.
A Rembrandt for Our Time

Emphasizing the effect of the relation between Spinoza and Rem-
brandt entails a consideration of how their work is effective. Such a
project has to insist on the cultural and political relevance of their
workand that also means the relevance of their work for our time.
In Reading Rembrandt, the case was made that Rembrandt is
part of popular culture.5 During the Rembrandt year in 2006, what
seemed a persistent project of uglification of Amsterdam seemed to
disprove that case because that use or abuse could only turn a lover
of Rembrandts art away from his work. The heading A Rembrandt
for Our Time might suggest that this would be precisely what these
public demonstrations of pride in the past attempt to do: recycle the
images for people today. However, just as the ubiquitous Van Gogh
sunflowers during the Van Gogh anniversary a few years earlier made
us temporarily hate that artist, the only effect of the recurrence
on the city streets of the same imagesthe Jewish Bride, the Night
Watch, and a caricature self-portraitis to make them cheap, and
thereby erase, the potential for actualized meaning of the images

that constitute the Rembrandt corpus. A popular-culture Rembrandt
would be, rather, art that addresses preoccupations, obsessions, and
problems that circulate in popular culture. In other words, to talk
of Rembrandt as part of popular culture does not mean merely
to acknowledge the effect of his images displayed for financial or
nationalistic motives; rather, it means primarily to register the effect
of living culture in Rembrandts own workas well as the reverse,
that is, how that culture rewrites, reenvisions Rembrandts work.
Only then will an image be allowed to have its meaning actualized.6
The best case for the popular-culture aspect of the images is to
be made through Rembrandts history paintings. For these address
popular stories and myths, including the ideologies such stories
embody in their various popular manifestations. The recurrence of
well-rehearsed stories in culture would, today, be associated with
Hollywood cinema, for example, or soap operas on television. In
earlier times, the theater would be a place of such recurrence. This
is why we will make the case here through the well-worn story of
misogyny of Joseph and his attempted seduction and betrayal by
Potiphars wife.
There are two reasons for choosing this story to bring Spinoza
into the picture. First, the story is known from the Bible and the
Koran and is now transmitted through the medium of painting, so
it is useful in showing different ways of connecting, such as those
signified with the use of the preposition inter-: inter-cultural, inter-
temporal, and inter-disciplinary. Spinozas opposition to dogma-
tism can easily fit into practices that make an excellent use of this
preposition. In the Theologico-Political Treatise, for instance, Spinoza
argueswith the use of philosophy, biblical hermeneutics, cultural
theory, and historiographythat the Bible is not a divinely derived
text but a social construct. This not only allows for a comparison
between different versions of the same story, for instance, Jewish
and Islamic. The different choices and directions taken by an author
record those different versions within a text. Thus different versions
have a normative significance and thereby disclose the imagina-
tion in Spinozas sense, that is, the culturally determined rules and
regulations of a society. Therefore they are indispensable for the
construction of meaning.
The second reason for choosing the story of Joseph is the need
to revisit the central distinction between image and word drawn in
Reading Rembrandt (see chapter 1 of that volume). As was argued
there, paintings like the series depicting Joseph and Potiphars wife
break the relation of illustration, that is, the subordination of the
image to the word, or vice versa. There is no simple or immediate
way to reconcile the relation between image and word. Conversely,
to see their relation as irreconcilably ruptured is indispensable for
the actualization of meaning in contemporary culture.7 This is the
constitutive interruption that can be gleaned from Rembrandts
works, as will be shown in the following section. This rupture also
stages the relation between painting and philosophy. This is not an
attempt to make either Rembrandt or Spinoza exemplars in some
kind of common project; rather it shows that art needs thought, no
less than thought needs art. What binds Rembrandt and Spinoza is
the crucial role they assign to rupture in the production of culture.
Ruptures, which allow for cultural, political, and disciplinary inter-
relations, are mediated through the rupture between image and
word. The split between image and word has the power to produce
meaninga power that is registered in the dynamic articulation of
different versions of the same narrative. We will show later how this
rupture figures in Spinozas workand moreover in ways that make
a case for Spinozas relation to art in general, and to Rembrandt in
particular.
For now, we will read closely Rembrandts different depictions
of the Joseph and Potiphars wife story to show how the actualiza-
tion of meaning arises when the depiction and the description are
productive so long as an immediate or self-evident relation between
them is not possible. Meaning is never bestowed immediately, it is
not monological; rather it is the interactualization between different
versions of the relation between image and word.
Versionings
Rembrandt painted the scene of Josephs seduction by Potiphars wife
twice. The repetition is generally explained in terms of the theater
play after which he painted them, Joost van den Vondels Joseph in
Dothan. Halfway during the successful performance of this play in
Amsterdam in 1655, the role of the main character changed actress.
282 M I EK E BAL AND D IMITRIS VARDOULAKIS
figure 11.1. Rembrandt van Rijn, Joseph and Potiphars Wife, oil on canvas, 106
98 cm, 1655. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
For the viewer today, this historical information is not relevant. In-
stead, on the basis of convention or symbolicity, we propose to read
these two paintings in the first place as a comic strip, and hence as
a sequence, as if they were subsequent moments or scenes in the
episode of the accusation. The first painting (Figure 11.1), now in
Washington, D.C., is the first phase. Here the accusation itself is acted
out. The second painting (Figure 11.2), now in Berlin, represents
Josephs protestations. This is the gap-filling painting. In the Bible,
Vondels and hence Rembrandts most likely source, Joseph does not
protest. In the Koran, he does. In Vondels play, he does, too.
Another mode of encouraging narrative reading of paintings is the
figure 11.2. Rembrandt van Rijn, Joseph and Potiphars Wife, oil on canvas,
113.5 90 cm, 1655. Gemldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photo by
Jrg P. Anders.
concentration of several moments at once, as if in a doubly exposed

photograph. Rembrandt used a third mode of storytelling, briefly
indicated as gesturing hands. We will see that he contributed to the
story a vindication of the woman close to the Korans version. There
the woman, who becomes an object of gossip, retaliates by inviting
her women friends to a banquet. During dessert, when oranges and
very sharp little knives have been distributed, she orchestrates the
arrival on the scene of the handsome Yusuf.8 Stunned by his beauty,
the women cut their hands, some of them to the bone, and a genuine
bloodbath convinces them that their friend had cause to transgress.
Rembrandt contributes to the womans vindication, even if no little
knives wreak bloody havoc in his paintings. The brief reading pro-
posed here was prompted by reading the koranic version.
Both paintings offer a gap-filling and indirect versioning of Gen-
esisif we assume that Rembrandt was familiar with the biblical
story, if not necessarily with the text, and most likely saw the play
at least twice but is unlikely to have read the Koran. There are a
lot of assumptions here. We only offer them to make what follows
a bit less outrageous than it might otherwise be, not to make any
historical claims about the paintings. On the contrary, the point is
preposterous, that is, contemporary and constructing the past as
part of the present, in a rewriting of the past.9
According to Genesis, Potiphar is only told about Josephs alleged
attempted assault after the event and in Josephs absence. Therefore,
in terms of Genesis, the presence of Joseph in the paintings suggests
a condensation. The scene, then, presents the seduction attempt for
which the husband has to be absent together with the later accusa-
tion for which Joseph had to be absent. In the Washington painting,
Yusuf s position toward the back, on the far left of the picture plane
and at the far side of the bed, suggests not only his subordinate posi-
tion in the house and his subdued position as the accused but also
the temporal anteriority of his presence.
Although we will refrain from alleging Rembrandt scholarship,
one example of the reasoning in this scholarship might help us un-
derstand the difference between the kind of speculation we perform
here and the equally speculative reasoning common in art history. The
great Rembrandt scholar Otto Benesch claims that in both paintings,
Joseph was originally kneeling.10 This is quite plausible and makes the
final decision more meaningful. Yet Beneschs argument that in the
Washington painting, this must have been so because the womans
hand is gesturing toward the bedpost is utterly unconvincing. First
of all, she is pointing to the red cloth, supposedly Josephs coat, the
evidence of his assault for Potiphar and, for us, of her desire.
While the Washington painting condenses two moments, the
Berlin one takes the aftermath further by expressing Josephs desper-

ate protestations of innocence. Here we have the seduction attempt,
the accusation, and the refutation. Both images position Joseph at
the far side of the bed as the earlier moment. In the Berlin paint-
ing, Potiphar, at the other side of the bed and closer to the woman,
embodies, as listener, the second moment of the accusation but is
drawn into the third by Josephs reply. Thus time is represented by
means of space. This we consider a narrativization of the scene. Its
move of condensation takes the story further qua narrative. Though
the text had to present the events successively, thereby avoiding the
meeting of the men, the painting is capable of drawing the three
moments together so that this meeting must occur. What the text
had to separate, the paintingand the theatercan integrate: two
men, one woman.
In the painting from Berlin, the third narrative device, the repre-
sentation of speech through speaking hands, is integrated. This turns
the painting more theatrical. The woman points more explicitly to
Joseph than in the other work. In both images, her left hand covers
her breast, as if to protect her from the assault while also protesting
that she is telling the truth. In terms of the representation of speech,
this hand indicates that she is telling Potiphar about Josephs physical
assault on her, and the lively, theatrical manner in which she tells
it strengthens the readability of her speech. Moreover, legally, she
confirms what Genesis believes and the Koran questions. Potiphars
right hand is resting on the chair, slightly behind the woman, thus
creating a sense of intimacy between the two that excludes the ac-
cused. Now we have a structure of man-and-wife versus the other
man. The Berlin painting is adequate to the mission of telling the story.
The other painting does more. The same semiotic devices are used:
sequentiality to symbolically represent narrative time, condensation,
and speaking hands. But the same devices of narrativization are
much more ambivalent here as signs. For example, the hand with
which the woman supposedly accuses Joseph does point, but not at
him. The index is misdirected. It points perhaps to the red garment,
the false tokenevidence, indexof Josephs misbehavior: the
object that lies. But even that direction is not so clear. And instead
of gesticulating theatrically in despair, Joseph, here, is standing still,
with downcast eyes. His left hand, which is just a little above his
arm, suggests that he was about to say something but has hesitated.
This painting is much more enigmatic than the one in Berlin.
For this reason alone, we would like to experiment with a reversal
of reading. In the Western tradition, where reading goes from left
to right, images tend to be structured in the same way. Rembrandt
frequently plays with the tension between compositions on the flat
surface of the canvas and the structure of linear perspective.11 Here
a reading from the right side of the bed versions the story in terms
quite different from Genesis. Now, on the image seen as flat and from
right to left, Potiphars hand is not so clearly behind the woman but
slightly in front of her, as if on its way to grabbing her. The woman
protects her breast again but, in combination with the lesser distance
between her and Potiphar, his grabbing hand and his determined
facial expression, it seems as if, ignoring the biblical story, it is he who
is approaching her (sexually?) against her will. Joseph, meanwhile, is
just standing there. His passivity, downcast eyes, and darker shape
make him now less likely an accused; rather he could be seen as the
more desirable, younger, more handsome love objectthe womans
fantasy. Yes, this is a preposterous interpretation. Several indications
for it, however, can be construed.
First, there is the work of lightone of Rembrandts signature
signs. The light is much more subtle in this painting than in the
Berlin one. It falls on the bed and the woman in both paintings,
but in the Washington one, Joseph is also very subtly illuminated,
whereas Potiphar, in contrast, is almost ghostly. The light produces
a pattern in which the young man and the woman are illuminated
to the exclusion of the older man. As a ghostly figure, the latter
comes to evoke the dead father of Freuds Totem and Taboo, who
threatens both son and woman. Josephs face has an intense yet
unclear expression. It is hard to decide whether he is anxious, desir-
ous, or admiring. This intense ambiguity points to dreaming, to
fantasy. Moreover, he seems here sexually ambiguous. His gender
wavers. The curtain, much more clearly indicated in the Berlin
picture, as a (realistic) representation of a bed curtain, is here so
vaguely indicated that its only function seems to be to set off Jo-
seph as standing in a space, lighter and farther away, at the other side.
The most intriguing details are the eyes of each of the three pro-
tagonists. Each figure looks intensely but inwardly. No figure looks at
a clearly defined object. The woman does not look at her husband;
rather she seems to stare at an inner visionthe vision where her
desire is staged. The older man does not look at the woman. He, too,
may be concentrating on his desire, or from another perspective, he
may be looking at nothing; he may already be dead. Josephs look,
not directed anywhere either, is even more inward than those of the
two others, while also almost directed at the viewer.
The difference in Josephs look reinforces the radical separation
between Joseph, on one hand, and the couple, on the other. When
viewed from the other side of the bed, his image is almost detached,
as if it were a portrait on the wall. The lower seam of his garment
is the end of himno legs are attached. Of course, the resulting
floating impression of his image will probably have increased over
time. Time darkens paint, and thus the dark underside of the em-
bedded image of Yusuf has turned more abstract over the centuries.
For todays viewer, this material effect is immaterial, increasing as it
does the immateriality effect of he whom the Koran women called
not a man but an angel. Visuality, in this way, is pluralized by the
different modes of looking so that the figures do not have the same
visual status. Joseph is and remains a sign, both for the viewers and
for the viewers in the image, the couple. He remains a dream image.
Like a portrait on the walla projection on a screenthe floating
figure of Joseph is itself the inner vision, the object of preoccupation
of the two others. When viewed in isolation, Joseph seems full of
feeling yet not involved in any event.
Between these three still and intense-looking figures, there is an
object that attracts attention, if not from the figures, then at least
from the viewer. That is, of course, the red cloth, the garment lying
over the bedpost, standing there, erect between the woman and the
youth. The color points to the blood that, in the Koran, testifies to the
desire of all womenthe plural you as in your wiles of Potiphars
contemptuous generalization. Should the red garment testify here,
by the color it shares with blood, to the event the woman is supposed
to evoke with indignation as the one that really happened? Or does it
represent her desire, her hallucination, that it happened? Between the
grounds of iconicity of which, for Peirce, color is the quintessential
example, and that of indexicality, where it can point to prior events
or desired futures with equal plausibility, the sign should not be split.
All these elements point in the direction of fantasy. But they

have led us rather far from Genesis, unless we reprocess Genesis
in light of the painting. These are the details that differentiate this
painting from its successor in Berlin more radically, say, than they
differentiate the painting from the Korana text we can presume
not to have been Rembrandts source. With the Koran, it shares the
tenderness with which it attends to the womans desire. The point
is one of the two seemingly divergent points of the Koran story, the
theological testing of Joseph and the vindication of the womans
desire. Or we may now say that in this painting, the two points are
joined, condensed.
The details, or rather, the detailed looking that allows the nar-
rative potential of the picture to unfold, leads to the idea of fantasy.
Fantasy, as the uniquely staged projection of a dreamer temporarily
split up between the roles of director and actor, is itself held together,
albeit tenuously and provisionally, by the intensity of the committed
viewer. The latter takes part in the play. This is why fantasy in culture
takes on a function that distinguishes it from myth. If myth is the
open structure, the screen onto which the cultural doxa can make
us unreflectively project preconceived opinions about our others,
fantasy, also a projection, engages each of us personally and com-
mits us to looking-with, as in suffering-with: with a commitment
to integrate the thrill of sensate vision with intellectual, critical
reflection. This distinction between fantasy and myth is important
for the conception of the individual within society for Spinoza as
well, as we will show later.
Like the Washington painting, the scene in the Koran has the
same aspects of intersubjectivity, of lack of limits between subjects,
that can be called a porous subjectivity. The cutting scene enhances
and explains the accusation.
In the Koran, Potiphar commends Yusuf to his wifes care through
the invocation of two obligations: hospitality and parenting. In Gen-
esis, Joseph is said to be seventeen years old when he leaves home.
This seems a bit old for a child-minding setup. The Koran does not
specify his age in numbers but rather in stages. There is no gap but
rather a narrative need. For the privileged position he will acquire
in the house to be possible, he needs to be hosted like a member
of the family. And for this, he must be assumed to be young. This
figure 11.3. Rembrandt van Rijn, Joseph and Potiphars Wife, etching, 9 11.5
cm, 1634. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands.
youthfulness is also required for the story of his temptation. God

leads him through the risks of youthful folly. Before any of the mis-
haps begin, God has already done this: And when he had reached
the age of strength we bestowed on him judgment and knowledge;
for thus we recompense the well doers (12:22).
Transitional age is often symbolized as liminal, from limen (thresh-
old). Thresholds and doors represent passages of the life stages. Thus
the race of the two characters to the door in Rembrandts etching
of the same episode (Figure 11.3) puts Yusuf and the woman in the
same situation, perhaps at the same transitional phasea race that
the Koran mentions explicitly: And they both made for the door,
and she rent his shirt behind; and at the door they met her lord
(12:25). In the Rembrandts, including the Washington painting, the
older mans presence on hither side of the bed suggests the door
is on the right. In the etching on the same subject, it is on the left.
There Joseph still had a choice, but he looked back instead of fleeing.
And whereas in the painting, the figure of Joseph has the aura of a
290 M I E KE BAL AND D IMITRIS VARDOULAKIS
fantasmatic projection, in the etching, the womans distorted body

looks less than real. Does this justify the speculation that Rembrandt
used the different media of painting and etching to explore two
radically divergent versionings? In painting, the medium of commis-
sions and sales, he explored the official version that the doxa of his
culture prescribed so that, within the margins of socially acceptable
behavior, he could only tamper with the scene of the crime enough
to turn the accused into a fantasized image.12
In the etching, by contrast, we can imagine that he was exploring
different possibilities. Now, Joseph is the one hallucinating. What
he sees, with that weird back-looking eye, is a distorted, fat belly.
He might see in that belly a future in which the woman would bear
him children or the chubby belly of a child that could be his sibling.
Nothing is too crazy for hallucination. Nor does anyone have to see
what this imaginary figure sees-in. That he does do precisely that,
seeing-in, seeing more than is there, is what makes him the great
visionary, the dream specialist to which the Koran devoted an entire
sura, exceptionally.
A man shall not take his fathers wife, nor discover his fathers
shirt, said the end of Deuteronomy 22. There appears to be a link
between adultery and transgenerational offence, as there is between
the fathers shirt and the sons, from the drunken Noah to the tempted
Joseph. Can Christians Believe in the Prophesy of Muhammad? asked
the title of an unpublished text we were able to read.13 Although
it strongly suggests a positive answer, that text ends on a question
mark. That is fine with us, for belief is not the issue in this chapter,
no more than it was for Spinoza, not because we do not respect or
believe other peoples beliefs but because we are looking at belief s
underside. Fantasy, desire, hallucination, and projection are the stuff
that makes belief possible. Clearly Rembrandt suggests, if only
through the quietness of his Washington picture of hallucination,
that there is no harm in thought or feelings. It is when you begin
to believe in what you see that you get into trouble. Joseph, in the
etching, sees things that attract and frighten him. No harm done.
The woman, in the painting, sees a youthful, handsome beauty. No
harm done. The absence of harm is in the eyes of the beholder.
Joseph does not look up. His downcast eyes make him the famous
visionary, like the blind Homer of old.
Rembrandts means of storytelling condensed, as we have seen,

the two and three key events, respectively, that compose the episode:
the attempted seduction against which Yusuf was already protected
beforehand, the accusation, and his refutation. In that sense, he
also acts like a prophet, for he predicts what was to happen later.
But according to both biblical and koranic logic, later is better. The
perfectionism implied in the further refinement of creation as well
as the relevant exegetical choices retained to make the two points
are the perfection of prophecy: to guide humans in the right direc-
tion by means of re-citing what will happen. This is the paradoxical
performance of prophecy.
Josephs face in the Washington painting can be seen because
he is not God. What is more, it must be seen for the temptation to
be possible and to be so generalized that it becomeslets face it,
with God behind it so explicitlysacred. But he cannot see; he must
keep his eyes downcast so that he can seeagain, like Homer
and all those blind sages and prophets who, as Derrida (Mmoires)14
has demonstrated in an exhibition composed of the archives of the
Louvre, are the true artists. The paradoxical connection between
blindness and insight that sustains the biblical story and becomes
radicalized in the semiotic program of the perfectioned version
of the Koran is in turn conventional. The stakes of this paradox
bring us back to the lures and the (im)possibilities of intercultural
interpretation. If myths are a cultural necessityframeworks within
which to thinkthen versionings are the freedom within it. Spinozas
idea of freedom in, or even as, necessity clarifies what rewriters and
repainters can do.
This little exercise in constructing such an interpretation helps
validate and value different versionings as mutually supportive
rather than murderously rivaling. There is little that our time needs
more urgently than such a shift in perspective on culture and cul-
tural specificity. The infinite variations Rembrandt brought to the
simple materiality of paint help us to understand the many shifts
that occur when popular culture takes hold of story matter derived
from different sources. The intercultural responsibility that the
paintings thus appear to promote can only occur today, in a world in
which the past is the responsibility of the present so that the future
may survive. And the necessary precondition for assuming such a
present responsibility is the distinction between image and word. This

means that word and image do not match, do not overlap; they can
neither do with nor do without the other.15 This rupture in their
relation prevents the solidification of myth into a rigid belief and
thereby allows for Rembrandts versionings to acquire an actualized
meaning and an intercultural significance.
Art and Culture in Spinoza

The intercultural significance of responsibility for Spinoza can only
be understood, as Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd have argued,
on condition that responsibility is not reducible to an individual,
sovereign subject but rather is dispersed in a collective imagining.
Such a responsibility makes both past and future concerns relevant
for the present.16 However, even after realizing that such a notion of
responsibility is crucial for Spinoza, there are three further outstand-
ing issues in showing a Spinozist notion of versioning with affinity
to the practice of versioning in Rembrandts work. First, we need
to demonstrate what the role of art and its link to responsibility is
for Spinoza. Second, we must discover the constitutive rupture or
distinction in Spinozas philosophy that resists the calcification of
the image in a rigid interpretation. And third, we have to explain
how a Spinozist interpretation against the grain can be alloweda
reading from right to left, so to speak. This is a pressing issue, given
that in chapter 7 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza famously
argues in favor of interpreting literally. These three issues are in fact
interrelated in such a way, as will be shown, as to elicit the affinity
between Rembrandt and Spinoza.
First, then, what is the role of the arts in Spinozas thought?
Spinoza has fascinated practitioners in all art forms perhaps more
than any other philosopher. Nevertheless, his philosophy seems
oblivious to the arts. References to the arts in the Spinozist cor-
pus are few and far between and do not amount to anything like
a developed aesthetic in, for instance, the Hegelian sense.17 Nor
is there in Spinoza an extensive discussion of aesthetic categories
like beauty. Spinozas correspondence contains two references to
beauty. Despite their brevity, they are intriguing because they ar-
gue that beauty is not a category of a separate realm but rather
part of cultural practice. Through looking at the role of beauty,
a more general function of the arts in Spinoza can be deduced.

At the beginning of his famous 1665 letter about the little worm
in the blood, Spinoza writes to Oldenburg, It is only with respect
to our imagination that things can be said to be beautiful (Ep. 32).
Imagination is Spinozas first kind of knowledge. As belonging to the
imagination in this sense, beauty becomes imbued in the production
of cultural norms that bind a society together. The total field covered
by imagination also includes the fantasies of the prophets that gener-
ated culturally cohesive myths. Spinoza returned to beauty nine years
later in a letter to Boxel: Beauty, he says, is not so much a quality
in the perceived object as an effect in him who perceives (Ep. 54).
The first significant point here is that beauty is not effectuated by
the perceiving individual. Spinoza denies that the source of beauty
is the individual. But, then, what is the cause of this effect?
It would be too simple to refer back to the letter to Oldenburg
to argue that imagination, and hence culture and society, are the
cause of beauty because then Spinoza will be forced into an ideal-
ist position incompatible with his materialism. Instead, the answer
should be sought in the way that the materiality of the object is the
cause of beauty, but without thereby making beauty a quality of
the perceived object. To put the same point the other way round,
the object on its own is not the cause of the imaginative field made
possible by its beauty. This leads to an important conclusion for our
purposes here. Cultural practice is neither subjective nor objective.
Indeed, in the remainder of the same paragraph in his letter to Boxel,
Spinoza does not seek to dispel the aporia between the subjective and
the objective; rather he further accentuates it: So things regarded
in themselves, or as related to God, are neither beautiful nor ugly.
Therefore he who says that God has created the world so as to be
beautiful must necessarily affirm one of two alternatives: either that
God made the world so as to suit the desire and the eyes of men,
or the desire and the eyes of men to suit the world. The regulative
term of this aporia is God. The index of ontologyof the things
regarded in themselvesis the single immutable substance. But
the ontology of humans and of things, or of everything created in
nature, is different from Gods, who is, according to Spinoza, neither
a creator nor a purposeful actor.18 In this sense, Spinozas substance
has nothing do with the God of the dogma and the churches; rather
294 M I EK E BAL AND DIMITRIS VARDO ULAKIS
Spinozas god or substance is the regulative term that guarantees

the ontology of being and thought.
Yet the term aporia is somewhat misleading in this context. Maybe
it would be better to say that God indicates here a principle of rupture
or disruptionwhich leads us to the second issue, about locating
that threshold that regulates the relation between images and words.
Proposition 7 of Part II of the Ethics famously asserts that the order
and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of
things. This proposition does not assert a parallel between thought
and object, as the eighteenth-century interpretation of this proposi-
tion emphasized. The corollary makes it clear that the connecting
principle here is God. And this means that apart from God, there is
a disruption between thought and being. To put this the other way
around, that part which disrupts the relation between thinking and
existence is God. Gods all-inclusiveness makes it necessary that
everything else be broken up, ruptured, apart. From this perspec-
tive, the connection between things and thoughts is disruptiveor
ruptured, interrupted.
It is not possible to explicate in any detail here Proposition 7,
which, according to Hegel, contains the whole of Spinozas philoso-
phy. Rather our aim is to present the repercussions of this disruption
for a Spinozist conception of arts cultural significance, in this case,
of Rembrandts work. Indeed, it is significant that Spinoza uses art
twice to argue for the importance of another, related rupture, that
between essence and existence.19 These are the two most extensive
references to art in Spinozas corpus. In both cases, Spinoza uses art
to argue that the essence and the existence of things are separate.
Only in God do essence and existence coincide. Spinozas God, as
already intimated, is not a creator. Essence and existence are, con-
versely, the attributes of created things. Each mode has its cause in
these two attributes. Essence and existence are not related to God as
their cause, but rather, as the Proof of Proposition 7 of Part I puts
it, the substances essence necessarily involves existence. In God,
there is no distinction or disruption between them, whereas such a
distinction is necessary for all created things.
Erasmus, an interlocutor in the Second Dialogue of Spinozas
Short Treatise, objects that saying God is not a creator cannot account
for the production of anything new without thereby adding to Gods
essence. Theophiluss reply consists in asserting that creation can

occur only if essence and existence are separated: if something new
appears, then that is only a part of a whole that remains unaffected.
Theophilus offers the following illustration:
An image-carver has made from wood various forms after the likeness
of a human body; he takes one of these, which has the form of a hu-
man breast, joins it to another, which has the form of a human head,
and of these two he makes a whole, which represents the upper part
of the human body; would you therefore say that the essence of the
head has increased because it was joined to the breast? That would
be erroneous, because it is the same that it was before.
And Theophilus goes on to explain:
All attributes, which depend on no other cause, and whose definition

requires no genus pertain to the essence of God; and since the cre-
ated things are not competent to establish an attribute, they do not
increase the essence of God.20
The other side of the assertion that created thingsincluding works

of artnecessarily follow the distinction between essence and exis-
tence is that there is no absolute novelty in art. An art object is not
completely unique. Artistic practice does not consist in the creation
of something ex nihilo; rather creation is only ever a re-creation
a repainting, a rewriting, a rephilosophizing. The prefix re- of any
creative practice is necessitated by the rupture between essence and
existence.
Although Spinoza does not continue to develop a theory of the
arts, the way he frames the distinction between essence and existence
provides us with the means to do so. Three important inferences
follow from it, which concern the work, the artist, and criticism.
First, from an epistemological point of view, artistic practice affirms
the accidental and the contingent in the work. The rupture between
essence and existence prevents the object from claiming for itself
a privileged cognitive position, as if it were to offer a perception
an imagewhose validity would be universal. As an activity, the
art object is material, the product of the artists chance encounter
with matter.21 Second, the word chance does not abrogate the artists
responsibility over the work nor the importance of technique in art
practice; rather it indicates that the artist can never have complete
control over the material. There is no Artist-Genius who creates his
own self-referentialor solipsistic, phantasmagoricaluniverse.
Third, a critical approach to a work is therefore obliged to resist any
immediate connection between technical or stylistic aspects of the
work and the works meaning.22 For instance, no particular color
has a meaning in itself, nor can the way that colors are applied on
the canvas yield only one conclusion. The play of light and shadow
in Rembrandts use of chiaroscuro is not enough in itselfpace
Deleuzes assertion in the citation at the beginning of the present
chapterto form a basis for a critical comparison between Spinoza
and Rembrandt. Meaning is actualized only when the form acquired
by matter is seen as a productive, dynamic activity open to different
interrelationsopen to versioning. The production of meaning
is also a cultural event, and in this sense, the arts bear an ethical
responsibility.
If the arts have an ethical responsibility, it is to be discerned in
their resistance to immediacy, in their affirmation of versioning. But
this can only occur when artistic practice is understood as the enact-
ment of the rupture of essence and existence. Precisely because the
artist practices that rupture, Spinoza thinks that the artist is uniquely
positioned to demonstrate it, even more than the philosopher who
may be lost in intellectual meanderings:
[How the distinction between essence and existence is easily learned.]

Finally, if any philosopher still holds doubts whether essence is
distinguished from existence in created things, he need not toil
away over definitions of essence and existence in order to remove
that doubt. For if he merely approaches a sculptor or a woodcarver,
they will show him how they conceive in set order a nonexistent
statue and thereafter bring it into existence for him.23
Art, as a praxis of this rupture, acquires a uniquely didactic and

hence ethical significance.
The third issue indicated earlier has to do with Spinozas insistence
on a process of understanding or a hermeneutics which, in Spinozas
phrase, seeks the literal meaning.24 Chapter 7 of the Theologico-

Political Treatise explicitly rejects metaphorical interpretation. This
poses a problem about how versioning can become operative within
this hermeneutical framework. Artistic categories are culturally sig-
nificant because of their relation to the imagination, and arts own
ethical responsibility is based on its practical aspect. But are not both
imagination and responsibility in danger of being canceled out by the
positing of a literal meaning? Would not such a literal meaning
grind to a halt the productive force of culture and ethics? We have to
show why this is not the case and how Spinozas notion of a literal
meaning in fact tallies with our notion of versioning.
The context within which the argument about literal meaning
occurs is important. In the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza argues
against miracles. The miracles in the Bible are not events that break
the laws of nature but rather narrations used by their authorsthe
prophetsfor the purpose of establishing the law or social norms.
Therefore a proper hermeneutics cannot start with the acceptance
of miracles; rather the method of interpreting Scripture is no dif-
ferent from the method of interpreting Nature.25 Just as things in
nature display a rupture between essence and existence, so also the
interpretation of the events narrated in scripture should incorporate
that rupture. An interpretation that allows for the transgression
of the laws of nature would amount to nothing but the pure or
immediate manifestation of God, an event the occurring of which
is immediately related to its essence. But this is precisely what, ac-
cording to Spinoza, is not possible to see with human eyes or know
with the eyes of the mind. Hence interpretation should find an
alternative explanation of such accounts.
Practically, this hermeneutical stance allows no other principles
or data for interpretation of the Scripture and study of its contents
except those that can be gathered only from Scripture itself and from
a historical study of Scripture.26 In other words, the laws of the nar-
rative are immanent within the text itself.27 And this also implies that
there is no universal standpoint from which an interpretation can
seek its justification. Instead, interpretation is the productive activity
of reading a texta book, a picture, an event. But the text is also
actualized through this dynamically productive interpretation. This
double movement, or chiasmus, no longer requires an external source
of legitimization for the hermeneutical event. Such a literal reading

is precisely what we practiced earlier in reading Rembrandts images
of Josephs seduction. It was the material inherent in the depictions
themselves that constructed the terms of the interpretation. For
instance, recall the reversal of reading in the Washington painting.
Reading from right to left shows Potiphars sinister undertones. The
reversal of the normal reading direction in the West is a literal reading
precisely in the sense that it uses what the picture itself presents to
the viewer. The law of the picture is immanent in itself. There are
no legitimating standards outside it. That is the practical import of
reading the literal meaning, in Spinozas sense.
There is, also, a larger cultural and political aspect alongside the
practical hermeneutics. We mentioned earlier that the literal reading
of Rembrandts paintings showed their intimate link to the personal
fantasies and cultural myths that were conveyed in the biblical and
koranic versions of the story and from which our present interpreta-
tion springsas well as future ones by others. Cultural responsibil-
ity is enacted precisely in this scene, where the past and the future
collude in the creation of the present. This forms the recognition
of freedom within necessity: of freely assuming our responsibility
within the constraints that the mythic aspects of societyour cultural
imaginingsdictate, without thereby forgetting that this freedom is
not absolute but rather constrained by our personal fantasies. Accord-
ing to Spinoza, a metaphorical interpretation of the scripture denies
precisely this interplay between myth and fantasy. For instance, to
interpret a miracle metaphorically is to give it a universal meaning.
The mythic aspect of the miracle, its cultural and political significance,
is invested into a new myth. What is abrogated is the interpreters
personal responsibility to offer a critical reflection on the universality
of myth as a cultural construct. A metaphorical interpretation im-
bues the text with a universal significance that eludes its fantasmatic
provenance. In other words, the rupture between interpersonal myth
and personal fantasy is denied in a metaphorical interpretation. The
metaphorical interpreter uncritically legitimates the interpretation
myths with the use of personal fantasies.
Spinoza objects to such a forgetting of the fantasy within the
myth. His assertion that all knowledge of the Bible is to be sought
from the Bible alone,28 is a call to individual responsibility in the
construction of culture. As Spinoza clearly states at the end of chap-

ter 7 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, the supreme authority to
explain religion and to make judgment concerning it is vested in each
individual, because it belongs to the sphere of individual right.29 A
literal interpretation is, on one hand, individual and hence a hallu-
cination linked to the persons desires, and on the other hand, it is a
right, part of the mythic construction of law that binds the society
together. These two aspects constitute the inter-subjectivity that is
a necessary result of the rupture between essence and existence in
Spinozas metaphysics. They are also constitutive of the interruption
of the immediate relation between images and words in a reading
of cultural documents.30
An Inter-action
We have examined here three currents in Spinozas philosophy:
the imaginative and hence cultural value of artistic categories, the
importance of art in sustaining the distinction between essence and
existence, and the way the rupture of essence and existence is indis-
pensable in the actualization of meaning. The interdependence of
these three currents announces Spinozas affinity with Rembrandt.
This affinity has nothing to do with any analogy or correspondence
between the thought of the philosopher and the art of the painter.
It is instead discernible in the way art and philosophy, painting and
thought, are positioned at a threshold that indicates a break in their
relation. There is no immediate connection between them, nor can
one subsume the other. The work of both Rembrandt and Spinoza
affirms this rupture.
Simultaneously, their thought and practice strongly affirm that
such a lack of immediacy does not posit the creation of separate
realmsthe kingdom of philosophy versus the kingdom of art.
The effective presence of both art and philosophy in the creation
of culture means that images and words become productive forces
only so long as they are held apart. This has a practical, a political,
significance. The rupture between essence and existence has a con-
temporary cultural relevance only so long as it is practicedpracticed
in the present, while being mindful of the past and assuming re-
sponsibility for the future. Within this exigency, art and philosophy
become of necessity partners so that the rupture between essence
and existence can be sustained. And it is as part of this partnership

that a condensed, gestural conversation between Rembrandt and
Spinoza can unfold. Their relation is (im)possible because it affirms
the impossibility of either privileging art over philosophy, and vice
versa, or of establishing an immediate connection between them.
The (im)possible mediacy between philosophy and art unfolds in the
site of the interaction between Rembrandt and Spinoza.
Notes
1 The edition of Spinozas works cited here is the Complete Works,
trans. Samuel Shirley, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis, Ind.:
Hackett, 2002). References to the Letters are by letter number
preceded by Ep.
2 See, e.g., A. Wolf, Introduction, in Spinozas Short Treatise on God,
Man, and His Well-Being, trans. and ed. A. Wolf (New York: Russell
and Russell, 1963), xviiixix.
3 W.R. Valentiner, in a monograph on the relation between the two
figures, states, Spinoza and Rembrandt represent two opposing
conceptions in the Dutch culture of the seventeenth century: the
rationalistic and the intuitive. Valentiner, Rembrandt and Spinoza: A
Study of the Spiritual Conflicts in Seventeenth-century Holland (London:
Phaidon, 1957), 9.
4 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza and the Three Ethics, in The New Spi-
noza, ed. Warren Montag and Ted Stolze (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1997), 2526.
5 See Mieke Bal, Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the WordImage Opposi-
tion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
6 This double movement is called a preposterous history in Mieke Bal,
Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999).
7 The terms image and word are not used here in Spinozas sense,
e.g., in the Scholium to Ethics II, P49, where they are set off against
ideas or rationality. For a suggestive reading of how this proposi-
tion tallies with artistic practice, see chapter 10 of this volume, by
Anthony Uhlmann.
8 We have alternated between the biblical spelling of the name as
Joseph and the koranic spelling as Yusuf to keep track of the

context of the references. See also Mieke Bal, Loving Yusuf: Conceptual
Travels from Present to Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2008).
9 Cf. Bal, Quoting Caravaggio.
10 Otto Benesch, Collected Writings, vol. 1, Rembrandt (London: Phaidon,
1970), 9394.
11 This is how Mieke Bal proposed to read two of his major paint-
ings, Danae (Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia) and The Blinding of
Samson (Stdel, Frankfurt, Germany) in Bal, Reading Rembrandt,
3057 and 1921, respectively.
12 Esther Peeren proposed in Intersubjectivities and Popular Culture:
Bakhtin and Beyond (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
2008) the term versioning to suggest a more active relation to the
predecessor than the usual term version.
13 Paul Heck, Can Christians Believe in the Prophesy of Muham-
mad? (unpublished manuscript, 2005).
14 Jacques Derrida, Mmoires daveugle (Paris: Runions des Muses
Nationaux and Muse du Louvre, 1990).
15 Bal, Reading Rembrandt, 34.
16 Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd, Collective Imaginings: Spinoza,
Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1999), 8183.
17 James C. Morrison, Why Spinoza Had No Aesthetics, Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47, no. 4 (1989): 35965, has even
argued that an aesthetics for Spinoza could not have been possible
given the terms of his philosophy. Our argument here is the exact
opposite: Spinozas philosophy not only implies but also requires an
aestheticsalbeit not in a Hegelian sense but rather as the necessary
interrelation between artistic and philosophical practice.
18 One of the best-known places where Spinoza addresses the attribu-
tion of creative power and purposefulness to God is the Appendix
to Part I of the Ethics. Spinoza shows there that the end point of
anthropomorphic conceptions of God is indissoluble from political
pursuits by men and connected to their creating a good conscience
for themselves. When men become convinced that everything that
is created is created on their behalf, they are bound to consider as
the most important quality in every individual thing that which was
most useful to them, and to regard as of the highest excellence all
302 M I E KE BAL AND D IMITRIS VARDOULAKIS
those things by which they are most benefited. Spinoza concludes

that notions such as beautyas well as good and bad, etc.are
formed and used as part of such self-interest. (Cf. also chapter 5
of the present volume, written by Michael Mack, for a detailed
discussion of anthropomorphism in Spinoza.)
19 The relation between essence and existence is, according to Antonio
Negris contribution to this volume (chapter 12), the major site of
philosophical dispute since Hegels pronouncement of their im-
mediate conciliation in the absolute, at the end of history.
20 One should remember that according to Spinoza, although God
has an infinite number of attributes, the only two attributes that
could be known are essence and existence.
21 According to Sebastian Egenhofer, Die Abstraktion und die Topik
des Imaginren, in StrukturFigurKontur: Abstraktion in Kunst Le-
benswissenschaften, ed. Claudia Blmle and Armin Schfer, 26995
(Berlin: diaphanes, 2007), Mondrians abstract aesthetic can be
fruitfully related to Spinoza, so long as the artwork is denied such
a privileged epistemological position. The artists perceptions are
corporeal and contingent. Seine [Mondrians Abstraktion] Macht
ist mit der Ohnmacht des Sehenden.... Das Bild ist die Falle, die die
Falle der perspektivisch-egozentrischen Wahrnehmung verdoppelt und
wiederholt.
22 For an important study of the rupture between style and the material
presence of the work of art, see Andrew Benjamin, Style and Time:
Essays on the Politics of Appearance (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 2006).
23 Metaphysical Appendix to Spinoza, Principles of Cartesian Philoso-
phy, Part I, chap. 2.
24 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Complete Works, 469. A thorough
investigation of Spinozas antimetaphorical hermeneutics would
have to account for his reception of Maimonides. This would dis-
tract us from our objective. For a thorough account of the relation
between Spinoza and Maimonides, see Heidi M. Ravven, Some
Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the
Prophetic Imagination: Part 2, Spinozas Maimonideanism, Journal
of the History of Philosophy 39, no. 3 (2001): 385406.
25 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Complete Works, 457.
26 Ibid.
27 In other words, Spinoza is here propounding the central practical

dictum of an immanent critique similar to Walter Benjamins
and Theodor Adornos sensea critique that finds its conceptual
framework within the text at hand. Thus Adorno has also insisted
on the importance of a literal interpretation. Adorno, Notes on
Kaf ka, in Prisms, ed. Samuel and Shierry Weber, 24571 (London:
Neville Spearman, 1967).
28 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Complete Works, 459.
29 Ibid., 471.
30 This intersubjectivity can also be called transindividuality, follow-
ing Etienne Balibar, Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality
(Delft, Netherlands: Eburon, 1997).
part iv
Encounters about
Life and Death
12
Power and Ontology
between Heidegger
and Spinoza
antonio negri
the eye of the storm around which philosophical critique has

striven to build and rebuild itself throughout nearly two centuries
consists of the fact that in the realthat is, according to Hegel, in the
modernthe unity of essence and existence, of the internal and the
external, is immediate in the form as well as in the dialectic. It seemed
as if Hegel had worked out the problem. And yet, throughout the
entire silver age, and even more so in the bronze age of contemporary
German philosophy (namely, in the critical critique of the nineteenth
century and in the great academic philosophy of the fin de sicle),
essence and existence, substance and powerby then reconceptu-
alized as Wirklichkeit and Daseinare separated increasingly from
one another. Substance, first exalted as effective reality, is presented
later as command and destiny. Analogously, power, first intended as
antagonism, is defined later as irrationality. Little by little, philosophy
transforms itself into a sublime effort to exorcise the irrational or, at
any rate, into a mystification of power. The furious Hegelian will to
fix the dialectical hegemony of absolute substance is opposed by two
successive attempts: first, crisis and tragic horizon; later, a repeated
call to renew transcendental teleology in more or less dialectical
forms. Even though both these attempts hardly survived the scathing
Translated by John Conley and Cesare Casarino
307
308 ANTONI O NE GR I
irony of the likes of Marx and Nietzsche, they kept on putting forth
increasingly weaker but no less pretentious images of the modern.
It is worth observing that in this way, the hegemony of the rela-
tions of production over the forces of production at once disengages
its own representation from the Hegelian utopia of the absolute
that is, the Hegelian utopia of the triumph of the modern (capitalist)
Stateand dons the clothes of reformist teleology. The schemata of
indefinite duration, over and against those of dialectical infinity, are
renewed as projects in the service of the progressive rationality of
domination. The end of history becomes the telos of history.1 Mo-
dernity changes the sheets without getting a new bed. From then on,
everything drags along with much difficulty: any capacity for a real
renewal of thought is exhausted. Thought devises a thousand tricks
to bypass the impoverished as well as illusory, domineering as well
as utopian Hegelian intimation of the modern, thereby attempting
to substitute it with hackneyed forms of schematism of reason and
transcendentality. This process goes on until it wears itself out and
projects its own estrangement onto the definition of being itself.
Heidegger is the extreme limit of this processa process in
which he is fully immersed, if it is indeed true that one of the aims
of Being and Time is to rethink the Kantian theory of transcenden-
tal schematism. This is a process, however, that is thrown off track
completely at the very moment it sets outs along the usual paths.
Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the
meaning of being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the
interpretation of time as the possible horizon of any understanding
whatsoever of being.2 However,
if the interpretation of the meaning of being is to become a task,

Da-sein is not only the primary being to be interrogated; in addi-
tion to this it is the being that always already in its being is related
to what is sought in this question. But then the question of Being is
nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency of
being that belongs to Da-sein itself, namely, of the pre-ontological
understanding of being.3
The theme of the present time, of its relation to being and thus its
singular actuality, takes center stage. But here, as opposed to what
POWER AND ONTOLOGY 309
Hegel had attempted to build, Dasein is a broken temporality that is

rediscovered in each and every moment as presence: a presence that
is stability, that is a singular rootedness, that is against every disper-
siveness and every disorientation of Man. History and becoming are
now only a destiny of commerce and dejection. Facticity (effettivit)
is no longer the Hegelian Wirklichkeit but the crude Faktizitt. The
modern is destiny.
In the final pages of Being and Time, when arguing against Hegels
mediation and Absolute Spirit, Heidegger states:
Our existential analytic of Da-sein, on the other hand, begins

with the concretion of factically thrown existence itself, and
reveals temporality as that which makes such existence primor-
dially possible. Spirit does not first fall into time, but exists as
the primordial temporalizing of temporality.... Spirit does not
fall into time, but factical existence falls, as falling prey, out of
primordial, authentic temporality.4
Here, in this falling, in this being care, temporality constitutes itself

as possibility and project (autoprogettazione) in the future. Without
ever exposing itself to the insidious dangers of teleology and of the
dialectic, here temporality reveals the possibility of the present as
the most primordial ontological determination of Dasein. Only in
presence, therefore, does destiny reopen itself to possibility and to
the future. But how is it possible to authenticate Dasein? In this tragic
entanglement, death is the most proper and authentic possibility of
Dasein. In this tragic entanglement, death is also the impossibility
of presence: the possibility of an impossibility becomes, thus, the
most proper and authentic determination of Dasein.
It is easy to draw the conclusion that the fundamental theme of
modernitythe one captured by Hegel, the one of the synthesis of
being and time as well of Wirklichkeit and Daseinis over. Or, better
yet, it is overturned: immediate unity between essence and existence
is given in the nothing, in death. The Hegelian claim to the historical
determination (Bestimmung) of singularity has become resoluteness
(Entschlossenheit)deliberation and resolve of the disclosedness of
Dasein to its own truth, which is the nothing. At the dance of deter-
mination and of the transcendental, the music is over.
310 ANTONI O NE GR I
Between Hegel and Heidegger, thus, we have two opposite experi-

ences of life. Such a situation arises as soon as the bourgeois property
of happiness, having highlighted its own possibility of existence in
dialectical domination, reveals itself to be insubstantial. Not even the
later Heidegger, after the Kehre, will modify the situation. The distance
between Hegel and Heidegger, which is to say, between Heidegger
and the entire course of modern philosophy, could not possibly
be any greater. And yet, paradoxically, Heidegger is not so alone.
Heidegger is not merely the prophet of the destiny of the modern;
just as he divides, Heidegger is also a window that can open onto
antimodernity.5 Heidegger, in other words, points to a conception
of time as ontologically constitutive, which radically breaks the
hegemony of substance and the transcendental and opens it onto
a certain kind of power. The theoretical decision does not consist
solely in affirming resoluteness (Entschlossenheit); it is also related
to anticipation and disclosedness, which are truth itself insofar as
truth reveals itself in Dasein. The discovery of being consists not
only in uncovering (Ent-decken) the preexistent but also in positing
the autonomous stability of Dasein over and against the dispersive
mobility of Man.
By giving itself as finite, Dasein is open, and this disclosedness
is sight (Sicht): more than sight, however, it is Umsicht, an environ-
mental and anticipatory vision. Dasein is possibility; it is more than
that, however: it is being able to be (poter essere). Heidegger writes,
We presupposes truth because we, existing in the mode of being
of Da-sein, are in the truth.6 Moreover:
But Da-sein is always already ahead of itself; that lies in its con-
stitution of being as care. It is a being that is concerned in its
being about its own potentiality-for-being. Disclosedness and
discovering belong essentially to the being and potentiality-for-
being-in-the-world, and this includes circumspectly discovering
and taking care of innerworldly beings. In the constitution of
being of Da-sein as care, in being ahead of itself, lies the most
primordial presupposing.7
Therefore presence is not only being present in the truth, in the

unveiling of being; it is the projection of the present, authenticity,
renewed rootedness in being. Time aspires to be power, it alludes

to its productivity, it brushes up against its energy. And when it falls
back on the nothing, time does not in any way forget this power.
Spinoza reemerges in this articulation and forms a paradoxi-
cal relation with Heidegger. Tempus potentiae. The Spinozan insis-
tence on presence fills out that which we inherit from Heidegger
as mere possibility. The hegemony of singular presence in the face
of becominga characteristic of Spinozan as opposed to Hegelian
metaphysicsreaffirms itself as the hegemony of the ontological
fullness of the present as opposed to Heideggerian empty presence.
Without ever having entered the modern, it is here that Spinoza
suddenly exits from it. Whereas Hegel and Heidegger wanted to
condense time in becoming and in the nothing, respectively, Spinoza
overturned it in a positively open and constitutive time. In this same
ontological condition of absolute immanentism, love takes the place
of care. Spinoza systematically overturns Heidegger: to Angst he
opposes Amor, to Umsicht he opposes Mens, to Entschlossenheit he
opposes Cupiditas, to Anwesenheit he opposes Conatus, to Besorgen
he opposes Appetitus, and to Mglichkeit he opposes Potentia. In this
confrontation, presenceantiteleologismpossibility unite that which
the different meanings of ontology divide.8 At the same time, the
meanings of being are indeed divided: Heidegger goes toward the
nothing; Spinoza goes toward fullness. The Heideggerian ambiguity
that wavers over the void is resolved in the Spinozan tension that
conceives of the present as fullness. If in both Spinoza and Heidegger,
modal presencethat is to say, the phenomenological entity9is
released back into freedom, Spinoza, as opposed to Heidegger, also
recognizes it as productive force. The reduction of time to pres-
ence, therefore, opens in opposite directions: either constitution
of a presence that goes toward the nothing or creative insistence
of presence. Simultaneously, two constitutive directions open up
through the reduction of time to presence: if Heidegger settles his
accounts with the modern, Spinoza (who lived in the modern yet
never entered modern philosophy) shows the indomitable force of
an antimodernity that is completely projected into the future. In
Spinoza, love expresses the time of powera time that is presence
insofar as it is the constitutive action of eternity.
Even in the difficult and problematic genesis of Part V of the
312 A NTONI O NE GR I
Ethics, we see clearly this conceptual process taking shape. First of

all, in this process, the formal condition of the identity between pres-
ence and eternity is given: Whatever the mind understands under a
species of eternity, it understands not from the fact that it conceives
the present actual existence of the body, but from the fact that it
conceives of the essence of the body under a species of eternity
(Ethics V, P29). All this is reiterated in Proposition 30: Our mind,
in so far as it knows itself and the body under a species of eternity,
necessarily has a knowledge of God, and knows itself to exist in God
and be conceived through God. Above all, this is explained in the
Corollary to Proposition 32:
From the third kind of knowledge there necessarily arises the intel-
lectual love of God. For there arises from this kind of knowledge
pleasure, accompanied by the idea of God as its cause, that is, the
love of God; not in so far as we imagine him as present, but in so
far as we understand God to be eternal. And this is what I call the
intellectual love of God.
Eternity, therefore, is a formal dimension of presence. No sooner

has he stated this, however, than Spinoza overturns all of it with the
following explanation: Although this love of God does not have a
beginning ... it has all the perfections of love as if it had come into
being(Ethics V, P33S). We must be careful, therefore, not to fall into
the traps of duration: If we pay attention to the common belief
of men, we shall see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity
of the mind, but that they confuse it with duration and ascribe it to
the imagination, i.e. to memory, which they believe to remain after
death (Ethics V, P34S). On the contrary:
This love of the mind must be related to the actions of the mind. It
is therefore an action by which the mind contemplates itself, with
the accompaniment of God as its cause. That is, it is an action by
which God, in so far as he can be explained by the human mind,
contemplates himself accompanied by the idea of himself. So this
love of the mind is part of the infinite intellectual love with which
God loves himself. (Ethics V, P36Pr.)
And Spinoza continues:
From this we understand clearly in what our salvation, i.e. our bless-
edness, i.e. our freedom, consists: namely, in a constant and eternal
love for God, or, in the love of God for human beings.... For in so
far as it is related to God, it is pleasure. (Ethics V, P36S)
And the argument comes to conclusion in the clearest possible terms

in Proposition 40: The more perfection each thing has, the more
it acts, and the less it is acted upon; conversely, the more it acts, the
more perfect it is.
The time of power is therefore constitutive of eternity, insofar as
constitutive action resides in presence. Such a presupposed eternity
here is shown as product, as the horizon of affirmation and action.
Time is a fullness of love. To the Heideggerian, nothing corresponds
to the Spinozan plenitudethe paradox of eternity, of the fullness
of the present world, the splendor of singularity. Rather than care,
the concept of the modern is burned now by love.
And yet Heidegger and Spinoza had met somewhere. As we have
seen, this encounter had occurred with their break from the myth of
the modern (and indeed, Nietzsche had staged this encounter already).
Such a break with the modern is the common ground between two
authors who otherwise could not possibly be further apart. How
might this commonality, this passage through a common perception
and experience, be expressed? In what way have we come across an
irreducible resemblance? The first element of common introspec-
tion that Spinoza and Heidegger articulate on the ontological terrain
consists in radically affirming being as being-with (mit-Sein): this is
the common point at which their opposed philosophies intersect. In
both, being presents itself as being-together. Mind you, this mit-Sein
should not be banalized: it towers over every contingent relation as
well as over various figures of linguistic circulation. Neither the weak
philosophies nor the philosophies of language have understood it.
The realm in which singularities are immersed, the phenomeno-
logical fabric of existence, is in fact a fabric of hard relations: one
feels as if one is inside a dizzying pre-Socratic experience of being.
Being-with is disclosed continually, not only toward alterity but
314 A NTONI O NEGRI
toward the abyss: such is the inexhaustible instance that both these
philosophies reveal. Already, Husserl had described how this indi-
viduality is immersed in that mit-Sein from which it was emerging
as singularity. Already in Husserl, this dimension was characterized
by certain aspects that some would at times callor even denounce
asvitalist: on the contrary, it is here that the phenomenological
condition of immersing oneself in being began to present being as
a biopolitical figure. They tell us we should take care when tracing
being back to bios, and indeed there have been too many misunder-
standings already regarding this question. I insist, however, that these
misunderstandings are the same ones we have already discussed here,
namely, the alternative between the void and plenitude, the nothing
and power, death and life. Such is the relation between Heidegger
and Spinoza: in the latter, being assumes a biopolitical figure when
his philosophical project turns toward either being multitude (essere
moltitudine) or making multitude (fare moltitudine). Here being is
absolute productive immanence. The profoundest abyss becomes
the surface of existence.
It is shocking to return to this figure of being. Let us remember
Hegel: without radical Spinozism, there is no philosophy. Might we
also ask, is there philosophy without Heideggerism? That is what
some think, and this contention constitutes the basis of the definitional
expression itself as well as of the experience of the postmodern.
However, we must go beyond precisely these contentions and have
the courage to add that the qualification of being in Heidegger is
as scandalous and perverse as it is radically powerful and hopeful in
Spinoza. In the latter, being is qualified as ontological capacity for
production.
Is Heidegger therefore a reactionary and a fascist, while Spinoza
is a democrat and a communist? I am perfectly aware that by put-
ting it in this way, one burdens Heidegger with an undeniable his-
torical responsibility, while attributing to Spinoza improper and
historically inadequate affiliations. But it is precisely to explain this
historiographical problem when it comes to Spinoza and, on the
other hand, to make such a problem explicit with respect to the
history that Heidegger interprets in a reactionary manner that we
need to take up a few other questions here.
To be in mit-Sein is to be in the philosophy of the present. The

Copernican revolution in contemporary philosophy happens be-
tween Husserl and Wittgenstein. In this great passage, vitalism is
translated into two perspectives: it is interpreted mystically in the
linguistic analysis of Wittgenstein, and it is constituted ascetically in
the philosophy of Husserl. The immanence of being-with (essere-con)
and of being-within (essere-dentro) is established in this alternative.
Doing philosophy is to recognize oneself as immersed in time. Do-
ing philosophy is to recognize oneself as immersed in language.
Doing philosophy is to recognize oneself as immersed in being.
And it is only the relation with the other that relieves us from the
immediacy of the immersion of being in time; it is only the meaning
of difference (the relation among singularities) that extracts us from
that condition. The meaning of difference itself is articulated in the
interaction, in the being-with and in the being-within.
In this situation, Heidegger and Spinoza make different choices.
Nietzsche, for all the contradictory character of his thought, antici-
pated all this clearly: it is possible to choose between love of life and
allegiance to death, between pleasure of singularity and pleasure of
totality; it is possible to mobilize hatred of death against the eternal
return, to mobilize the experience of the multitude against the tran-
scendence of the political. What is so astonishing is the extent to
which these different choicesmade during a period of incredible
historical uncertaintycorrespond to the historical determinations
and political alternatives that postmodernity will present to us. In
effect, Spinoza and Heidegger think within the real subsumption
of society by capital: if for Spinoza this was a theoretical fiction, an
imagination, for Heidegger it was an irreversible tendency. For both,
no concrete historical alternatives to this condition exist because their
philosophies no longer have an outside. To be sure, Heidegger
often wavers on this matter: he listens to that call of destiny drawing
him toward the unknown, he accentuates a mystical current in the
experience of beingamor fati. To Spinoza, anything of the sort was
repugnant: his time and his spirit were open to a democratic revolu-
tion, and they drove him toward the choice of freedom and hence
of doing (operare), of praxis, as well as of the capacity to transform
interaction into multiplicity and the multitude into democracy.
316 A NTONI O NEGRI
It is here that we reach the point at which the two directions of

phenomenology (the one of being-within the phenomenological
context and the one of experimentation with being-with) inter-
sect, thereby building a contradictory complex that is broken up by
different choices. On one hand, we have Heidegger: he understands
human activity as abstract labor; he understands human beings as
responsible for that subsumption of life under power (potere) that
annuls the freedom of life by making it a product of destiny. On
the other hand, we have Spinoza: he produces a conception of the
materialist reappropriation of labor as well as of the rupture of the
totality of domination; he prophesizes democratic constitution.
For Spinoza, freedom is the very product of desire. If human be-
ings were born free, they would not need good or evil, and there
would be neither wealth nor poverty: it is because human beings
are born in misery that their desire produces freedom, thereby also
defining the goodwhereas evil is only the fruit of the privation of
freedom. Once again, here Spinoza opposes Heidegger, who says
that human beings are born free but that their freedom takes them
to the impasse of choice, that freedom is always excess, that being-
with is something that pits human beings against one another, as if
they lived in a cage. For Spinoza, cupiditas is never excessive because
freedom is a surplus of being, because freedom constructs its own
measure in constituting itself as history. For Heidegger, freedom is
being-for-death.
Here we are, thus, before the two different forms of phenom-
enological being inside the exclusive horizon of immanence, of
the within. On one hand, reason and affect as construction of this
being; on the other hand, Entschlossenheit and care as experience
of subjugation to a being that reveals itself as alienation and noth-
ingness. On one hand is that which is built, that which is project,
that which is historically determined; on the other hand is the Ur,
the unveiling, the knot.
Is there anything that interrupts the postmodern more than this
opposition? If Spinoza agrees with Heidegger in positing the phe-
nomenological dimension as fundamental, he is certainly against
Heidegger when developing the power of that entity which is within
being presentbeing within understood as modality of life. It
is interesting to note how Nietzsche had understood the profun-

dity and the power of this alternative. In effect, Heidegger absorbs
from Nietzsche above all that ideological hooliganism (teppismo
ideologico), that flirtation with conservative thought typifying a re-
actionary choice. No matter what Heidegger says, there is nothing
in Nietzsche that pushes toward reaction. There is nothing wrong
in opposing Nietzsche and Spinoza, as some have done at times,
including myself: the former destructive and ironic, the latter smil-
ing and full of humorbut we should stop there.10 Irony against
humor: on one hand is naturematter frustrated by necessity and
hence tragically open between pressure and (dis)-passion, whereas
on the other hand is nature that constructs, rejoices cautiously, and
at times thrusts itself forward with courage. And yet this opposition
is so appropriate!
When comparing Heidegger and Spinoza, however, things are
quite different. If we take what we have been saying into account,
it will not be difficult to discern this great conflict throughout
twentieth-century philosophy. In a very real sense, Heidegger and
Spinoza provide us with the return to the earth: such a return is to
be understood as an exit from any transcendent or transcendental
illusion; it is to be understood as recognition of the fact that being
is ours, that it is we who constitute it, and that this world is a fabric
of human relations. Vitalism? Well, vitalism has various modes of
being. The first is that which recognizes vitalism as an environment
and a dimension from which to begin the analysis of being, thereby
losing itself in the illusion that to be in life is to be in truth as well as
in the illusion of truth. The second is that which runs from Dilthey
to Husserl and which expresses itself by asserting the necessity for
the subject to be immersed phenomenologically in historical being.
The latter, however, is perhaps no longer vitalism; rather vitalism
is a conception of being in life that seizes the evental and epistemo-
logical singularity of Dasein. Spinoza had excavated this process of
being, whereas Heidegger does everything possible to destroy its
meaning.
Up until now, in investigating the possible points of tangency
between Heidegger and Spinoza, I believe we have exaggerated far
too much the proximity of these two thinkers. The time has come
318 A NTONI O NEGRI
to denounce Heideggers thought as reactionary, not only because it

is probably tied to the vicissitudes of the Nazi movement and fascist
politics but also because his conception of being is one that posits
destiny as the drowning of lifeit is a black snake. Heidegger chokes
us. The return to Spinoza allows for a few cautious reflections on that
folly of humankind that Heideggers thought interprets or reveals:
such a return allows us to oppose to Heidegger a vision of being
together, mit-Sein, as the whatever dimension, the strong dimension,
of human life. This is probably what democracy needs above all: to
proceed with caution in life.
Notes
this essay is a translation of Potenza e ontologia tra Heidegger e

Spinoza, a lecture given at the Spinoza Societys conference held in
Berlin in 2006. All references to Spinoza are to Ethics, trans. G.H.R.
Parkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
As has been often noted, the English term power translates two dis-
tinct terms in Italian, potenza and potere (which more or less correspond
to the Latin potentia and potestas, the French puissance and pouvoir, and
the German Macht and Vermgen). Whereas potenza resonates with im-
plications of potentiality, potere refers to authority, so much so that the
latter has at times been translated into English as constituted power or
sovereign power. Unless otherwise noted, all instances of the English
term power translate the Italian potenza.
All the notes are by the translators.
1 In the original: La fine della storia diviene il fine della storia.

2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1996), xix (1).
3 Ibid., 12 (15).
4 Ibid., 396 (436); emphasis in Heideggers original.
5 In the original: Nel mentre divide, Heidegger anche una cerniera
che pu aprirsi sullantimodernit.
6 Heidegger, Being and Time, 209 (227).
7 Ibid., 228.
8 Throughout the essay, we have translated the Italian senso (pl. sensi)
as meaning.
9 Here we have translated the Italian lente as entity to register its
distinction from lessere (which, we should add, is in this case more
aligned with John Macquarrie and Edward Robinsons earlier English
translation of Being and Time.)
10 Here as well as in the following sentence, humor appears in English
in the original.
13
A Thought beyond
Dualisms, Creationist
and Evolutionist Alike
a. kiarina kordela
a common assumption in the contemporary reception of Spinoza is

that his philosophy is a celebration of pure life, wherein death plays
no role on all of the levels that constitute his philosophy: ontology,
ethics, and sociopolitical criticism. In this reading, Spinozas monism
is sustained only on the ground of an unspoken fundamental dual-
ism between life and death and the exclusion of the latter. Antonio
Damasios recent interpretation of Spinoza is revealingly symptom-
atic of this approach, as it unveils that at stake in the underlying
opposition between life and death is the psychoanalytic pair of the
pleasure principle and the death drive. While Damasio perpetuates
the aforementioned dualism by reducing Spinozas substance to
the homeostatic principle of pleasure at the exclusion of the death
drive, I argue that Spinozas monism consists in the intertwining and
inseparability of not only body and mind but also death and life, and
that it is only through this intertwining that Spinozas ethics can
unfurl its potential for social and political criticism.
Body and Mind

In his Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003),
Damasio offers a reading of Spinozas work informed by neuroscien-
tific evolutionist premises that are both functionalist and teleological. 1
The organizing grid of Damasios overall argumentation consists
of two primary theses.
321
322 A . KI AR I NA KORDELA
The first, which will be the subject of this section, concerns the
distinction between emotions and feelings, as bodily modifications
and their mental representations, respectively, whereby the former
precede and cause the latter. Emotions are bodily states caused by a
complex collection of chemical and neural responses to an emo-
tionally competent stimulus (an ECS), all of which come to form
a distinctive pattern such as happiness, sadness, embarrassment,
or sympathy.2 Feelings, on the other hand, are mental representa-
tions of the parts of the body or of the whole body as operating in
a certain manner; that is, their contents consist of representing a
particular state of the body in the mind. Unlike emotions, which
pertain to the chemical and neural constituents of the body, a feeling
is a mental representation, a thought, a perception, or the idea
of the body being in a certain way.3 If feelings can be distinguished
from other perceptions or thoughts, even as the former are just
as mental as any other perception, this is so only because in the
case of feelings, the objects and events at the origin are well inside
the body rather than outside of it because these objects or events
are the states of the body itself.4 What I find really fascinating and
properly Spinozan about Damasios argument is that against the
tradition of the opposition between the thinking brain and the
feeling heart, it proposes the inseparability between intellect and
feelings: the feeling brain.
The question, however, is, at least for a reader of Spinozan incli-
nations, whether Damasios further line of thought will manage to
sustain the Spinozan monistic conception of the inseparability of
Body and Mind or whether this distinction between emotions and
feelings will eventually slide into the very Cartesian premise that
formed the target of Spinozas criticism: the dualism between body
and mind. Far from ignoring this danger, Damasio devotes an entire
section to an attempt at negotiating it. His discussion begins with an
unambiguous admission that Spinozas thesis in the Ethics, Part I,
that thought and extension, while distinguishable, are nonetheless
attributes of the same substance, God or nature, can only entail
that in a strict sense, the mind did not cause the body and the body
did not cause the mind.5 If this is so, then, emotions, too, cannot
cause feelings, just as the latter could not be the cause of the former.
To surpass this deadlock, Damasio introduces a further dualism,
A THOUGHT BEYOND DUALISMS 323
this time one between an entirely sensible aspect dualism and

what we could call vulgar or substance dualism.6 While Spinoza
rejected the latter, he was nevertheless, Damasio maintains, an
ardent advocate of the former. Spinozas refutation of substance
dualism postulates that mind and body would spring in parallel
from the same substance, fully and mutually mimicking each other
in their different manifestations, but for the mind [to] spring fully
formed from substance on equal footing with [the] body, Damasio
speculates, Spinoza must assume a mechanism whereby the equal
footing can be realized.7 This mechanism, in turn, has a strategy:
Events in the body are represented as ideas in the mind; that is,
Damasio continues conclusively, There are representational cor-
respondences, and they go in one directionfrom body to mind.8
In other words, the isomorphism or correspondences between
body and mind are purely representational, whereas ontologi-
cally speaking, the body precedes the mind and is the latters cause.
Spinozas monism of substance, Damasio tells us, in truth asserts
the ontological primacy of the bodyno body, never mindand
accords equal footing to body and mind only on the representational
or phenomenological level, after the existence of the body has
caused the idea of an object in a given mind, in this and only this
one direction.9 Ultimately, Spinozas insight, Damasio states,
consists in the following:
That in spite of the equal footing of mind and body, as far as they are
manifest to the percipient, there is an asymmetry in the mechanism
underlying these phenomena. He [Spinoza] suggested that the
body shapes the minds contents more so than the mind shapes the
bodys, although mind processes are mirrored in body processes
to a considerable extent.10
And in the fashion of, at least philosophically speaking, a counterin-

tuitive epistemology, it is surprisingly the empiricist Spinoza whom
Damasio assumes to have grasped the truth about the ontology of
body and mind, and not the universalizing philosopher, who pur-
portedly remains confined within their phenomenology. Damasio
regard[s] the Spinoza of The Ethics, Part Iwhere he addressed
the issues of mind and body in general, and about which, Damasio
324 A. K I AR I NA KORDELA
asserts, the equal footing of mind and body only works in the general
description offered thereas the consummate philosopher dealing
with the whole universe.11 By contrast, the Spinoza of Part II was
one concerned with a local problem and did not hesitate, not
unlike in contemporary neurobiology, to privilege body or mind
in certain circumstances such as from body to mind when we per-
ceive, and from mind to body when we decide to speak and do so.
Moreover, despite the empirical observation that certain thoughts
evoke certain emotions and vice versa, Spinoza was capable of
intuiting a solution he, unlike contemporary neurobiology, could
not specify, namely, that in truth, as in most of the propositions
[from Part II] discussed thus far, the body quietly wins, of course,
even as Spinoza may in some cases privilege the mind.12 One of
the implicit presuppositions in Damasios argument here is that
statistics provides more reliable cognitive access to ontology than
speculative philosophy.
In any case, if we accept his position and his further assertion
that the means to achieve the representational correspondences
or this sort of structure-preserving isomorphism between body
and mind are contained in the substance, then the substance must
guarantee that the mind faithfully mimic, with proportional preci-
sion in terms of both quantity and intensity, whatever structures
or modifications of the body happen to be presented by the latter
to the mind.13
In short, Damasios thesis is that Spinozas magnitude and original-
ity derive from the fact that perhaps he was not only undermining
the traditional notion, also cherished by Descartes, that the body
would arise from the mind, but also preparing the stage for discoveries
that would support the opposite notion, feverishly cherished also by
neuroscience, in which the mind always arises from the body.14 The
reception of Spinoza as a radical alternative to substance dualism is,
Damasio suggests, a massive misconstrual; Spinozas monism is not a
veritable alternative to Cartesianism but merely an inversion thereof,
of which neuroscience is the long-awaited realization, capable of
providing the vocabulary required to say for him [Spinoza] what he
obviously could not.15 For, while of necessity Spinoza knew very
little about the brain (qua organ, as opposed to the mind), we can,
on the basis of the findings from modern neurobiology . .. venture
that a vast proportion of the images that ever arise in the brain are
shaped by signals from the body-proper.16
Now, there is, of course, nothing surprising in the fact that a
neuroscientist would claim the causal primacy of the body over
the mind, but the question is, can Spinoza be invoked to support
this case? Can his theory justifiably be read as just an inverted Car-
tesianism, as we know it not only from neurobiology but generally
from the tradition of positivistic sciences since the Enlightenment?
Or is it an unambiguously monistic theory in which the mind (or,
for that matter, the body) needs no strategy, graciously offered by
its other (body or mind, respectively), to be able to stand on equal
footing with it?
Let us begin by examining the passages from the Ethics on which
Damasio himself draws to make his case. The key passage for him is
The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body.17
Damasio also sites other propositions in which this statement
is reworded and elaborated, such as the Mind does not have the
capacity to perceive ... except in so far as it perceives the ideas of
the modifications (affections) of the body, or more accurately, in
Edwin Curleys translation, the Mind does not know itself, except
insofar as it perceives the ideas of the affections of the Body [Mens se
ipsam non cognoscit, nisi quatenus Corporis affectionum ideas percipit].18
Worth citing is also the following reformulation of this basic the-
sis: The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of
things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a
great number of impressions, or, again in Curleys translation, the
human Mind is capable of perceiving a great many things, and is the
more capable, the more its Body can be disposed in a great many
ways [Mens humana apta est ad plurima percipiendum, & eo aptior, quo
ejus Corpus pluribus modis disponi potest], and as Damasio puts it,
perhaps most importantly, the human Mind does not perceive
any external body as actually existing except through the ideas of
the modifications (affections) of its own body [Mens humana nullum
corpsus externum, ut actu existens, percipit, nisi per ideas affectionum sui
Corporis].19
In the last of these formulations, Spinoza states that the human
mind can perceive an external body as actually existing not directly
through the modifications (affections) of its own body, that is, following
Damasios own distinction, not through the bodys emotions, but

only through the ideas thereof, that is, through feelings, which, as
Damasio has been arguing, are themselves perceptions or thought.
And the same is, of course, true of Proposition 23, which states that
the mind would not know its own existence if it did not have ideas of
affections, that is, feelings or thoughts. As far as the human mind is
concerned, if these thoughts are not in it, neither itself nor external
bodies would exist. Far from supporting the causal primacy of the
body, the cited passages, including the perhaps most important
proposition, seem rather to indicate: no mind, never body.
Moving to Proposition 14, it is precisely the concept of propor-
tion, and the statements in which Spinoza finds ideas proportional
to modifications of the body, that lead Damasio to deduce some
sort of structure-preserving isomorphy between mind and body
presupposed in Spinozas scheme.20 But far from implying any direc-
tion between the two parts, isomorphy entails that if the mind is
more capable the more its Body can be disposed, then the inverse
must also be true, so that the more the mind is capable, the more
ways there are in which the body can be disposed. Why, then, one
could object in support of Damasios thesis, doesnt Spinoza add
explicitly that the inverse is also always necessarily the case? Because,
as he stated already in Part I of the Ethics, God is the immanent, not
the transitive, cause of all things (Ethics I, P18), which is also to say,
as he states in the preface to Part IV, if God, or Nature ... are one
and the same [Deus, seu Natura ... una, eademque est], without the
one preceding the other, then the real cause of something is its im-
manent, and not some contingent transitive, cause. In short, the real
cause is itself effected by its own effects, in a synchronicity whose
force reduces to sheer falsity either the Bodys or the Minds claim
to causal precedence.
As far as Spinoza is concerned, both the Cartesian idealistic
primacy of the mind and the positivistic, including the vulgarly
materialistic, primacy of the body are the ostensibly true and false
manifestations of the proper truth. For, as he states in a passage in
the Ethics, in which, not accidentally, he returns to questions about
which he has shown the causes of falsity .. . most clearly from P19
to P35that is, in the very propositions invoked by Damasio
truth is the standard both of itself and of the false (Ethics II, P43S).
Depending on ones predispositions, the mind may appear to be the
cause of the changes in the body as much as the body may appear
to be the cause of the changes in the mind, but this switch in per-
spective is itself possible only because, Spinoza teaches us, in truth,
thought and extension stand on equal footing, as the empirical
modes of a single substance, just as (the) itself (of the truth) and
the false stand on equal footing, as the empirical modes of truth.21
And this is the foundation of proper materialism.
Spinozas thesis is that, if we want to understand how the hu-
man body and mind work, we must not assume the causal primacy
of either.
Evolutionism and Psychoanalysis

The second primary thesis in Damasios argumentation concerns the
subjection of life to the evolutionist principles of the best possible
self-preservation, adaptation, and development toward ever more
complex and functional forms of life. Damasio links the principle
of the best self-preservation to Spinozas concept of conatus and,
indirectly, via his reference to homeostasis, to Freuds concept of
the pleasure principle.22 The homeostatic mechanism, Damasio
writes, strives toward the maintenance of the organisms struc-
ture and chemical balance and is thus, not unlike Freuds pleasure
principle, a principle of constancy, an apparatus that is subsumed
as a special case under Fechners principle of the tendency towards
stability.23 Jacques Lacan also affirms the identity of the Freudian
pleasure principle as a homeostatic mechanism:
The organism already conceived by Freud as a machine, has a

tendency to return to its state of equilibriumthis is what the
pleasure principle states.... This restitutive tendency ... [or]
pleasure principle is explained in the following waywhen faced
with a stimulus encroaching on the living apparatus, the nervous
system is as it were the indispensable delegate of the homeostat,
of the indispensable regulator, thanks to which the living being
survives, and to which corresponds a tendency to lower the excita-
tion to a minimum.24
On the basis of the assumption that in the course of evolution the

innate and automated equipment of life governancethe homeo-
static machinebecame quite sophisticated, Damasio proceeds
to procure a hierarchical list of homeostatic functions, from the
lowest branches or the bottom of the organization of homeo-
stasis to the levels higher up until we reach the top, to conclude
eventually:
The entire collection of homeostatic processes governs life mo-

ment by moment in every cell of our bodies.... First, something
changes in the environment.... Second the changes .. . can
constitute a threat to [the organisms] integrity, or an opportunity
for its improvement.... Third, the organism detects the change
and acts accordingly, in a manner designed to create the most
beneficial situation for its own self-preservation and efficient
functioning.25
There is not the slightest trace of hesitation in Damasios spontane-

ous equation of the homeostatic maintenance of the organisms
chemical balance with the attainment of its most beneficial situ-
ation for its own self-preservation and efficient functioning. This
automatic association derives its license from the aforementioned
evolutionist premise that evolutionchange and differentiation in
lifeproceeds in a hierarchical way, from lower forms of life to higher
ones. For if this is the principle guiding life in general, shouldnt also
the life of each individual organism be guided by the same principle
so that each organism strives to its higher, most efficient functioning
and beneficial situation for its own self-preservation?
Here, however, we evidence the abyss that separates evolution-
ist from psychoanalytic thought. Having concluded the earlier cited
summary of Freuds conceptualization of the pleasure principle as
the homeostatic tendency to lower the excitation to a minimum,
so that the organism sustains, as Damasio would put it, its balance,
Lacan pauses to ask, To a minimum, what does that mean?26 How
is the balance or the minimum of energy within an organism to be
defined? It is only on the basis of the evolutionist, hierarchical and
functionalist, thought that it can be presumed to entail necessarily
the most beneficial situation for the organisms self-preservation.
For his part, Lacan continues to address the question beginning with
the following observation:
There is an ambiguity here.... The minimum tension can mean

one of two things, all biologists will agree, according to whether
it is a matter of the minimum given a certain definition of the
equilibrium of the system, or of the minimum purely and simply,
that is to say, with respect to the living being, death.27
It is due to this ambiguity inhering in concepts such as minimum

or balance that, as Lacanafter a long series of analytic authors
who have been puzzled by the relation between the pleasure prin-
ciple and the death driveremarks, at first sight, this restitutive
tendency is not clearly distinguishable, in Freuds text, from the
repetitive tendency, that is, the death drive, the very concept that
Freud is introducing, while attempting to define the pleasure prin-
ciple as the latters beyond.28 Lacan continues his syllogism to equate
eventually, on one hand, the pleasure principle with the first law of
thermodynamics, regarding the conservation of energy, and, on
the other hand, the death drive or repetition compulsion with the
second law of thermodynamics, regarding entropy, while stressing
that these two tendencies are strictly inseparable. No notion is less
unitary than that.29
Thus the specific definition of the equilibrium of the system for
psychoanalysis is given on the basis of the law of the conservation
of energyaccording to which, if there is something at the end,
just as much had to be there at the beginning, regardless of how
beneficial or well functioning this state of the organism may be for
its own self-preservation.30 Insofar as excitation entails an increase in
the organisms amount of energy, it follows that in the last analysis,
the pleasure principlethe principle of pleasureis that pleasure
should cease.31 The validity of this law applies within the limits of
the human in the organic sense of the word; yet this law is inseparably
intertwined with the death drive, as an incontestably metaphysical
category, which is a tendency toward disequilibrium.32 By contrast, in
Damasios evolutionist neuroscientific model, the pleasure principle
or the homeostatic machine is conceived as a mechanism infallibly
intended toward maximum pleasure and benefit, while having as its
sole enemy factors external to the organism itself. If this were Spi-
nozas conatus, then, contrary to Damasios own assertion, Spinoza
would not have had an important influence on Freud.33
Beyond this smooth sliding from the concept of homeostasis to
the teleological, non-value-free, and self-interested notion of the
organisms unmitigated striving toward ever more pleasure and
profit for itself, Damasios thought operates on the assumption that
also the passage from chemical processes to the symbol, that is, to
thought (including, of course, feelings), is equally smooth so that
he can unimpededly infer:
From chemical homeostatic processes to emotions-proper, life-

regulation phenomena, without exception, have to do, directly or
indirectly, with the integrity and health of the organism. Without
exception, all of these phenomena are related to adaptive adjust-
ments in body state and eventually lead to the changes in the
brain mapping of body states, which form the basis for feelings.
The nesting of the simple within the complex ensures that the
regulatory purpose remains present in the highest echelons of
the chain.34
Given these two central smooth paths that allow for Damasios tire-
less comings and goings between animate life and speaking animate
life, it is no surprise that his reading of Freud allows him to align him
with Charles Darwin as the two thinkers who dedicated their work
to studying the diverse influences of the innate and the acquired
from below stairs, with Darwin focusing on the fact that we have
humble origins and Freud on the fact that we are not full masters
of our behavior.35 Interestingly, Lacans reading of Freud leads him
to a radically different conclusion:
The idea of living evolution, the notion that nature always produces
superior forms, more and more elaborated, more and more inte-
grated, better and better built organisms, the belief that progress
of some sort is immanent in the movement of life, all this is alien
to him [Freud], and he explicitly repudiates it.. .. It is his experi-
ence of man which guides him.... It allowed him to locate the
register of a certain kind of suffering and illness, of fundamental
conflict, in man. To explain the world with a natural tendency to

create superior forms is quite the opposite of the essential conflict
such as he sees it played out in the human being.36
The essential conflict to which Lacan is referring is specifically that

between the pleasure principle and the death drive.
Evolutionism and Spinoza

But, one might rightly argue, even if we grant that Damasio pro-
foundly misreads Freuds pleasure principle, the primary emphasis
of his book is the connection not between Darwin and Freud but
between Darwin and Spinoza. What if Spinozas conatus, psycho-
analysis notwithstanding, indeed supports Damasios evolutionist
conceptualization of the homeostasis machine?
At first sight, this hypothesis seems indeed plausible, particularly
given that it is supported by certain other theoreticians who are
considerably familiar with Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis,
including the subtleties involved in the pleasure principle and its
relation to the death drive.
The French philosopher Alain Badiou, whose work addresses
and draws on various philosophical systems and French contem-
porary theories, such as Deleuze and Derrida, including Lacanian
psychoanalysis, states unequivocally that the ordinary behaviour of
the human animal is a matter of what Spinoza calls perseverance
in being, which is nothing other than the pursuit of interest, or the
conservation of the self, that is, the homeostatic mechanism of the
pleasure principle.37 And though the perseverance of being falls
under the law of the pleasure principle, its beyond, which obeys the
laws of the death drive, as Slavoj iek, the Lacanian and Marxist
philosopher and cultural critic, argues, seconding Badiou, is entirely
incompatible with Spinozas theoretical edifice. In ieks words:
What is unthinkable for [Spinoza] is what Freud terms death

drive: the idea that conatus is based on a fundamental act of
self-sabotaging. Spinoza, with his assertion of conatus, of every
entitys striving to persist and strengthen its being, and, in this
way, striving for happiness, remains within the Aristotelian frame
of what good life is.38
Is it indeed the case, as both Badiou and iek maintain, that there is
no room for the death drive in Spinozas theory? The basic principle
of Spinozan monism is that human beings and everything else that
exists (all modes of substance, in Spinozas parlance) embody the at-
tributes of the one substance (God) in the same degree of perfection
as it. In Gilles Deleuzes words, the same attributes are affirmed of
the substance they compose and of the modes they contain.39 It fol-
lows that if God or Nature has no end set before it, and ... all final
causes are nothing but human fictions (Ethics I, P36, Ap.)if, in other
words, one of the attributes of God is this radical absence of will
or entelechythen, according to Spinozas own system, this should
also be true for all existing beings (modes of substance); that is, all
existing beings must be marked not only by the tendency to increase
their power and pursue their interestssomething which, being a
goal, a final cause, must necessarily be based on a fictionbut also
by a complete indifference toward their own power and interest, up
to and including the opposite impulse, namely, to undermine their
power and interest. The Spinozan adamant elimination of will in
God or the One substance and the corollary principle of the uni-
vocity of the substances attributes and its empirical modes make it
impossible that the fiction of self-preservation will have the last word.
Given that indifference in itself cannot lead to action, the at-
tribute of Gods radical indifference, the fact that God or Nature
has no end, can manifest itself empirically only in two antinomic
modes, as the intertwining of two opposed tendencies: the tendency
to self-preservation and the self-sabotaging impulse we know as the
death drive. This is why, as Deleuze puts it, the death drive is not
the exception to the [pleasure] principle but ... its foundation.40
To return to Lacans words, the incontestably metaphysical pre-
supposition or foundation of the pleasure principlethe latter
being the law that governs only the domain of the living organism
or the human in the organic senseis the death drive, which
is therefore a category of thought and, as such, irreducible to
neurobiology, even as the latter can explain how thought may oc-
cur in the brain chemically speaking.41 Recalling again Spinozas
dictum that truth is the standard both of itself and of the false, it
follows that the death drive and the pleasure principle are the truth
and the false modes in which the attribute of the truth of Gods
radical nonwillfulness or indifference manifests itself empirically.
Far from making the death drive a concept unthinkable in
Spinozas thought, his own ternary conception of truth, as the
standard both of itself and of the false, constitutes one of the earli-
est and most succinct ways of articulating the relation between the
pleasure principle and the death drive as necessarily supplementary
rather than opposite tendencies of which one could accept the one
and expel the other from ones theory of human life.
Let us unpack the relation between the pleasure principle and
the death drive in more comprehensive Spinozan terms. What Lacan
and Deleuze refer to as the metaphysical level or the foundations
corresponds to what Spinoza calls the third kind of knowledge.
This he defines as a kind of knowledge [that] proceeds from an
adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to
the adequate knowledge of the [NS: formal] essence of things.42
The use of the word formal here already indicates that the object of
the third kind of knowledge does not concern the contingent and
particular accidents (in the Aristotelian sense of the word) but the
immutable and universal forms constituting the essence of the things
examined. Indeed, Spinoza offers an elaborate explanation of this
knowledge of formal essence, which is the object of the third kind
of knowledge, which we shall pursue presently.
In the same scholium, Spinoza had already defined the first kind
of knowledge either as deriving from singular things which have
been presented to us through the senses in a way that is ... without
order for the intellect, in short, a knowledge from random experi-
ence, or as a knowledge deriving from signs, e.g., from the fact
that, having heard or read certain words, we recollect things, and
form certain ideas of them, which are like them, and through which
we imagine the things on the level of a knowledge that is opinion
or imagination. The second kind of knowledge consists of our
common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things.
While the first kind of knowledge pertains to imagination and is
the only cause of falsity, knowledge of the second and third kind
is necessarily true, with the second pertaining to reason and the
third forming what Spinoza calls intuitive knowledge (Ethics II, P41,
334 A . K I AR I NA KORDELA
P40S2). In the fifth part of the Ethics, Spinoza returns to the third
kind of knowledge to say that it depends on the Mind, as on a
formal cause, insofar as the Mind itself is eternal (Ethics V, P31). In this
context, Spinoza introduces a crucial distinction between duration
and the species of eternity, or what, in poststructuralist terms, we
could call the distinction between diachrony and synchrony: What-
ever the Mind understands under a species of eternity, it understands
not from the fact that it conceives the Bodys present actual existence,
but from the fact that it conceives the Bodys essence under a species
of eternity (Ethics V, P29). Spinoza proceeds to demonstrate this
proposition: Insofar as the Mind conceives the present existence of
its Body, it conceives duration, which can be determined by time, and
to that extent it has only the power of conceiving things in relation to
time.... But eternity cannot be explained by duration.... Therefore,
to that extent the Mind does not have the power of conceiving things
under a species of eternity (Ethics V, P29, Pr.). To follow further
Spinozas reasoning, we must now go backward to the second part
of the Ethics, where he advances avant la lettre the Kantian position
thatgiven that God is Nature, that is, everything existent, including
the Mindthe very necessity of Gods eternal nature entails that
it is of the nature of Reason to perceive of things under a certain
species of eternity, and hence to regard things as necessary, not
as contingent. This also means that the foundations of Reason
are notions ... which explain those things that are common to all,
and which ... do not explain the essence of any singular thing but
of the universal, which therefore must be conceived without any
relation to time, but under a certain species of eternity (Ethics II,
P44C2 and Pr.). Going forward now again to the fifth part, and the
conclusion that the Mind, in its capacity of conceiving the Body in
time, cannot explain eternity, Spinoza continues:
But because it is of the nature of reason to conceive things under

a species of eternity ... and it also pertains to the nature of the
Mind to conceive the Bodys essence under a species of eternity
... and beyond these two, nothing else pertains to the Minds
essence.... This power of conceiving things under a species of
eternity pertains to the Mind only insofar as it conceives the Bodys
essence under a species of eternity, q.e.d. (Ethics V, P29, Pr.)
The third kind of knowledge is concerned only with the universal

under a species of eternity, wherein there is no time and the Mind
conceives the Body as eternal. The third kind of knowledge, therefore,
addresses not the empirical life as we conceive it within time but the
metaphysical presuppositions of this empirical life. And it is precisely
in this sense that the death drive is the metaphysical presupposition
of the pleasure principlewhich is also why, contrary to a common
misunderstanding, it does not designate any tendency to die within
the linear temporality of our biological existence.
What is more, Spinozas understanding of the Minds essence as
conceiving of all things and its Bodys essence under a species of eter-
nity has portentous consequences on his conception of the Body, up to
and including death. It follows directly from Spinozas monismand
therein lies the crux of the matterthat the inseparability of body
and mind would necessitate a radical reconceptualization of death,
given that the Mind itself is eternal (Ethics V, P31). Spinoza is very
explicit about the fact that by death, he does not mean necessarily
biological or clinical death. In his own words:
I understand the Body to die when its parts are so disposed that
they acquire a different proportion of motion and rest to one
another. For I dare not deny thateven though the circulation
of the blood is maintained, as well as other [signs] on account
of which the Body is thought to be alivethe human Body can
nevertheless be changed into another nature entirely different
from its own. For no reason compels me to maintain that the
Body does not die unless it is changed into a corpse. And, indeed,
experience seems to urge a different conclusion. Sometimes a man
undergoes such changes that I should hardly have said he was the
same man. (Ethics IV, P39S)
Death can be seen only as a subcase among all possible instances in

which the Body can be changed into another nature entirely differ-
ent from its own so that one should hardly have said [it] was the
same [Body]. A trauma, for instance, whether due to biological or
psychological reasons, can be said to involve death in the Spinozan
sense, insofar as the person concerned may be an entirely different
person after the traumatic experience. Let us call this nonbiological
death symbolic death, but let us also keep in mind that whenever
death appears in Spinozas text, both meanings should be taken
into account.
Furthermore, whether death, or the threat thereof, manifests
itself as biological or symbolic death, Spinoza is again very explicit
about the fact that the self-preservation of the human being is not,
and, a fortiori, should not be, the primary principle guiding human
life. Again in his own words: What if a man could save himself from
the present danger of death by treachery? Would not the principle of
preserving his own being recommend, without qualification, that he
be treacherous? (Ethics IV, P72S). Spinoza responds to his question
in an emphatically negative way, comparing the logic of this claim
to one that would maintain that a free man could act deceptively:
If a free man, insofar as he is free, did anything by deception, he

would do it from the dictate of reason (for so far only do we call
him free). And so it would be a virtue to act deceptively ... and
hence ... everyone would be better advised to act deceptively to
preserve his being.... But this is absurd. (Ethics IV, P72, Pr.)
Therefore a free man always acts honestly, not deceptively (Ethics

IV, P72). Similarly, with regard to using treachery to save ones life,
biological or symbolic, Spinoza tells us:
The reply to this is the same. If reason should recommend that, it

would recommend it to all men. And so reason would recommend,
without qualification, than men make agreements, join forces, and
have common rights only by deceptioni.e., that really they have no
common rights. This is absurd. (Ethics IV, P72S)
However, absurd or not, I will maintain that this is exactly what

happens when one sustains that the homeostatic mechanism is the
ultimate principle of human life. All the more so when one raises
it to an ethical principle, which is what Damasio does in his book.
This brings us directly to the field indicated by the title of Spinozas
major book, Ethics, which will be the subject of the next section.
For now, let us examine some further passages from the Ethics
regarding a specific kind of death: suicide. Once again, Spinoza

makes it amply clear that by death, he always means also symbolic
death, as is evident in the following list of examples for reasons to
commit suicide:
Someone may kill himself because he is compelled by another,

who twists his right hand (which happened to hold a sword) and
forces him to direct the sword against his heart; or because he is
forced by the command of a Tyrant (as Seneca was) to open his
veins, i.e., he desires to avoid a greater evil by [submitting to] a
lesser; or finally because hidden external causes so dispose his
imagination, and so affect his Body, that it takes on another nature,
contrary to the former, a nature of which there cannot be an idea
in the Mind. (Ethics IV, P20S; brackets in the original)
In the last example, the Body does not necessarily undergo biologi-
cal death; rather the suicide consists in assuming another nature,
contrary to the former, of which there cannot be an idea in the
Mind so that the person becomes a new person both in Body and
Mind, as was the case of that Spanish Poet who suffered an illness,
and though he recovered, he was left so oblivious to his past life
that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had written were
his own (Ethics IV, P39S).
Drawn to its logical conclusion, this conception of death leads,
of course, to a fundamental psychoanalytic position, which Spinoza
foresaw, even as he shrank before his own thought, stating, But
rather than provide the superstitious with material for raising new
questions, I prefer to leave this discussion unfinished (Ethics IV, P39S).
The terrifying answer that Spinoza refuses to give, possibly because
he suspects it, responds to the question he raises immediately after
the example of the Spanish Poet:
If this seems incredible, what shall we say of infants? A man of

advanced years believes their nature to be so different from his
own that he could not be persuaded that he was ever an infant,
if he did not make this conjecture concerning himself from [NS:
the example of ] others. (Ethics IV, P39S)
What in psychoanalysis is known as castration, that is, the entrance

of the infant into the symbolic order (language), is precisely a death,
in fact, the first symbolic death of the human being, out of which
emerges the (speaking) subject, the subject as a member of the
symbolic order. And as iek reminds us, this death takes place as a
sacrifice in the form of a forced choice, that is, to repeat Spinozas
words, a sacrifice motivated by the desire to avoid a greater evil by
[submitting to] a lesser, whereby there is only one right choice
if one is to become a member of the symbolic community in the
first place. In ieks words:
The fundamental insight behind the notion of ... symbolic

castration ... is that a certain sacrificial situation defines the
very status of man qua parltre, being of language. ...43 The
entire psychoanalytic theory of socialization, of the emergence
of the subject from the encounter of a presymbolic life substance
of enjoyment and the symbolic order ... [is] the description
of a sacrificial situation which, far from being exceptional, is the
story of everyone and as such constitutive.... [That is,] the social
contract, the inclusion of the subject in the symbolic community,
has the structure of a forced choice: the subject supposed to choose
freely his community (since only a free choice is morally binding)
does not exist prior to this choice, he is constituted by means of it.
The choice of community, the social contract, is a paradoxical
choice where I maintain the freedom of choice only if I make
the right choice: if I choose the other of the community, I stand
to lose the very freedom, the very possibility of choice (in clinical
terms: I choose psychosis).44
Because the subject enters the symbolic community through the

paradoxical path of this forced choice, which as such is not a free
choice, in truth the choice of the symbolic community by the subject
is not ethically binding since only a free choice is morally binding.
This, as we shall see in the next section, is not without consequences
for the issue of ethics.
Read against the background of this concept of castration or
the social contractno less operative because tacit in Spinozas
textas the humans first symbolic suicide, and specifically as a forced
and hence ethically nonbinding choice, Spinozas commentary on

suicide reveals itself as a radical social critique, already advancing the
thesis that people dont commit suicide, it is society that suicides
peopleif it so happens that society is so profoundly contrary to
their nature. In Spinozas words:
No one . . . unless he is defeated by causes external, and contrary,

to his nature, neglects to seek his own advantage, or to preserve
his being.... Those who do such things are compelled by external
causes, which can happen in many ways.... But that a man should,
from the necessity of his own nature, strive not to exist, or to be
changed into another form, is as impossible as that something
should come from nothing. (Ethics IV, P20S)
No person would commit suicide if external reality were not contrary

to the persons nature. To remain close to home, given the external
causes, the specific sociohistorical circumstances of Spinozas own
life, his self-preservation required at least two suicides. Spinoza
wouldnt have led either the Christian or the Jewish community
to excommunicate him if they were not contrary to his nature.
Conversely, remaining within either community would amount to
losing both his freedom and his virtue, which, for Spinoza, would
be worse than biological death. For self-preservation is for Spi-
noza the preservation not of just nature or life but of a specific
nature or lifewhich no neurobiological conception of evolution
could ever specify.
In a footnote to his translation of the Ethics, Edwin Curley remarks
that it is true that Spinoza does not condemn suicide, but neither
does he regard it as an act which could ever be virtuous, much less
paradigmatically free.45 It goes without saying that suicide cannot be
a virtuous act for Spinoza, given that virtue ... is nothing but acting
from the laws of ones own nature, and if people commit suicide,
biologically or symbolically, they do so because of external causes
that are contrary to their nature (Ethics IV, P18S). Similarly, it is
impossible that suicide could ever be a paradigmatically free act,
given that one could never find oneself in a society that is contrary to
ones own nature by ones own free choiceone finds oneself there
through the paradox of forced choice. The issue, therefore, is not
simply that, in Curleys wordsunlike Cailloiss position, according

to which, even on the issue of suicide, Spinoza is a StoicAppuhn
is correct in arguing that Spinozas treatment of suicide marks an
important point of difference from the Stoics just because Spinoza,
unlike the Stoics, did not praise suicide as a virtuous or free act. What
is more, Spinoza differs radically from the Stoics in this point also
insofar as his entire theoryas is also evident in other of his works,
particularly his two treatisesis an acute, however subtle and self-
censored, critique of his contemporary society.
Homeostasis, Joy, and Ethics

It is time to return to the crucial moment in Spinozas argumentation
at which reason decisively dictates that one contributes to ones own
death by persisting in not committing treachery. We can imagine this
scene as much in a torture chamber as in a bourgeois salontorture
and death come in various modesthough it is more likely that
Spinoza had biological death in mind with regard to this example,
and as far as Damasios argument is concerned, death taken here
only in the biological sense suffices to indicate that Spinoza gives
unambiguous priority to reason over self-preservation as understood
by Damasio.
Spinozas thesis derives directly from his conceptions of freedom
and virtue and is corollary to his overall social critique. If virtue
dictates that one conducts ones existence according to the laws of
ones own nature, and if external conditions oppose this nature, then
there is no reason to preserve this existence that is detrimental to
ones own nature. There are cases in which this requires a biologi-
cal suicide and others in which it entails a symbolic suicide, but in
both cases, it is a matter of a choice between evil and lesser evil. If
treachery is against reason, then it is contrary to the nature of the free
person (i.e., the person of reason), and hence the latter will choose
to die. Here we have the repetition of the primary choice involved
in the entrance of the subject to the symbolic order, the difference
being that whereas that choice was forced (one must choose the
right choice to be able to choose in the future), here one is free to
choose either, that is, to choose either to remain free or to lose ones
freedom. It is therefore on the level of such choices that the ethical
dimension is opened up.
Given that death, too, biological or symbolic, is an alteration of

human naturearguably, in fact, the most radicalthe crucial ques-
tion arising here is, how is it possible that death can, under certain
circumstances, be a lesser evil compared to any other evil? To respond
to this question, which constitutes the core of ethics and generally
the conduct of human life, we must first pursue further the proper
domain of ethics as one which, contrary to Damasios designation
of it as the domain of the homeostatic principle of self-preservation,
is defined precisely as its beyond.
Despite what I see as his misreading of Spinoza, Badiou is right
in arguing that the composition of a subject of truth, that is, of an
ethical subjecta subject who knows what is good or not beyond
the question of the mere conservation of the self does not fall
under this [homeostatic] law of the pleasure principle that deter-
mines the ordinary behavior of the human animal.46 Similarly, his
reading of Spinoza notwithstanding, iek is also right in arguing
that what is outside [the] scope of the homeostatic principle, and
hence presumably outside Spinozas scope, is what Kant refers to
as the categorical imperative, an unconditional thrust that parasit-
izes upon a human subject without any regard for its well-being,
beyond the pleasure principle.47 Both statements refer to the
domain Lacan has designated as the between two deaths, that is,
that point of view from which life can only be approached, can
only be lived or thought about, from the place of that limit where
... life is already lost, where [one] is already on the other side,
from where one can see [life] and live it in the form of something
already lost.48 In other words, in our ethical dimension, we are in
a realm beyond the historical drama [one] has lived through, at
the limit or the ex nihilo outside the confines of time, where, as it
were, death and immortality coincide.49 To put it in Spinozas terms,
the possibility of ethics in human life emerges out of the Minds
essence, its characteristic of conceiving the Body under a species
of eternity. The ethical dimension, therefore, opens up on the level
of the third kind of knowledge, which means that ethics is a purely
metaphysical human modality.
The crucial point is that, as Spinoza writes, whatever we un-
derstand by the third kind of knowledge we take pleasure in. For
if, as we have seen, the Minds essence is to think in terms of the
third kind of knowledge, then from this kind of knowledge there

arises the greatest satisfaction of Mind there can be ... Joy (Ethics
IV, P32 and Pr.). This is how it is possible to experience the threat
of death as lesser evil, in fact, as the sole possible Joy, if all other
alternatives oppose ones nature. In fact, Spinoza writes as much
fairly explicitly in the context of his discussion of the third kind of
knowledge: death is less harmful to us, the greater the Minds clear
and distinct knowledge (Ethics IV, P38S).
It is this metaphysical pleasure or joy, deriving from the third kind
of knowledge, to which Lacan refers with the term jouissance (enjoy-
ment), the very concept he introduces in his attempt to formulate a
theory of ethics that goes beyond the entirety of a tradition from
the origin of moral philosophy to Damasio and beyond, in which
all meditation on mans good has taken place as a function of the
index of pleasure ... along the paths of an essentially hedonistic
problematic.50 Spinozas ethics is clearly an exception to this tradi-
tion, placing at the center of his investigation metaphysical Joy, a
pleasure beyond any pleasure and consideration the Mind and the
Body may have within time.
There is more to be said about this Joy. In the first part of the
Ethics, Spinoza had introduced Gods own pleasure as nothing other
than his radically indifferent will: this opinion, which subjects all
things to a certain indifferent will of God, and makes all things de-
pend on his good pleasure, is nearer the truth than that of those who
maintain that God does all things for the sake of the good (Ethics I,
P33S2). In the fifth part, we come to understand that Gods pleasure
is the very pleasure or Joy we experience through the third kind of
knowledge, which is why, as Proposition 33 continues to state, our
pleasure is accompanied by the idea of God as a cause, which has as its
corollary that from the third kind of knowledge, there necessarily
arises an intellectual Love of God. For from this kind of knowledge
there arises ... Joy, accompanied by the idea of God as its cause,
i.e., Love of God, not insofar as we imagine him as present ... but
insofar as we understand God to be eternal. And this is what I call
intellectual love of God (Ethics V, P32, Pr. and C). Here I am tempted
to state that the true formula of atheism is not God is dead but
God is not that which we imagine to be present but that which we
understand to be eternal. For his part, and having in his repertoire
a concept unavailable to Spinoza in this specific sense, Lacan states

that the true formula of atheism is not God is dead ... [but] God
is unconscious.51 Albeit cast in the terminology of another century,
Lacans thesis remains in absolute accord with Spinozas position
that God is the cause of our metaphysical pleasure, the very pleasure
we derive from the ethical state opened up to us by the third kind
of knowledge, insofar as, again in Lacans words, the status of the
unconscious is ethical, not ontic.52 In other words, if the third kind
of knowledge is the realm of metaphysics and ethics, their cause is
the unconscious (Spinozas God).
That the unconscious is not ontic also means that, as Freud
already knew, it operates outside the categories of space and time
that predicate the empirical or ontic world. Spinoza is equally explicit
that his entire discussion of the third kind of knowledge and the joy
we derive from it, up to the intellectual love of God, do not concern
objects in time and space. First he advances the by now obvious to us
thesis that there is nothing in nature which is contrary to this intellectual
Love, or which can take it away (Ethics V, P37). I say this is obvious
given the example of the free man who chooses death rather than
treachery: even death cannot conquer the mans intellectual Love
for God, as the former takes place within time, whereas the latter
takes place under a species of eternity; a fortiori, it is precisely the
choice of death, postulated by Reason, that allows for this intellectual
Love of God in the first place. Nevertheless, Spinoza proceeds to
demonstrate his position in his usual geometric manner, wherein he
argues that this intellectual Love follows necessarily from the nature
of the Mind insofar as it is considered as an eternal truth, through
Gods nature (Ethics V, P37, Pr.). One implication here is that noth-
ing in nature could destroy this intellectual Love of God because it is
eternal, and therefore there is nothing that can be greater, whether
in extension or power, and hence capable of destroying it. Earlier,
however, Spinoza had posed the axiom that there is no singular
thing in nature than which there is not another more powerful and
stronger. Whatever one is given, there is another more powerful by
which the first can be destroyed (Ethics IV, A1). Sensing the pos-
sibility of a perceived (ostensible) contradiction on the part of his
reader, Spinoza adds the following Scholium immediately after the
demonstration of Proposition 37: [part] IV [axiom] A1 concerns
singular things insofar as they are considered in relation to a certain

time and place. Hence this axiom has no validity within the timeless
realm of the third knowledge.
For the effect of stark contrast, it is worth citing extensively,
without interruption, Damasios thesis on both institutions involved
in the governance of social behavior and ethics:
The ultimate goal of those institutions ... is precisely the regula-

tion of life in a particular environment.... The ultimate goal of
these institutions revolves around promoting life and avoiding
death and enhancing well-being and reducing suffering.... This
was important for humans because automated life regulation can
only go so far.... Without the help of deliberation, pedagogy, or
formal instruments of culture, nonhuman species exhibit useful
behaviors that run from the trivialfinding food or a mate; to the
sublimeshowing compassion for another. But look, for a mo-
ment, at us humans. We certainly cannot dispense with any part
of the gene-given innate apparatus of behavior. Yet it is apparent
that, as human societies became more complex ... human survival
and well-being depended on an additional kind of nonautomated
governance in a social and cultural space. I am referring to what
we usually associate with reasoning and freedom of decision....
Nature has had millions of years to perfect the automated devices
of homeostasis, while the nonautomated devices would have a
history of a few thousand years.... Social conventions and ethical
rules may be seen in part as extensions of the basic homeostatic
arrangements at the level of society and culture. The outcome of
applying the rules is the same as the outcome of basic homeostatic
devices such as metabolic regulation or appetites: a balance of
life to ensure survival and well-being.... The constitution that
governs a democratic state, the laws that are consonant with that
constitution, and application of those laws in a judicial system
are also homeostatic devices.... All of these institutions can be
seen as part and parcel of the tendency to promote homeostasis
on a large scale. Along with the good results they often achieve,
however, these bodies suffer from many ills and their policies are
often informed by deficient conceptions of humanity that have not
taken into account emerging scientific evidence.... Proposition
18 in part IV of The Ethics ... reads: ... the very first foundation
of virtue is the endeavor (conatum) to preserve the individual self,
and happiness consists in the human capacity to preserve its self.
... How does Spinoza move from oneself to all the selves to whom
virtue must apply? Spinoza makes the transition relying again on
biological facts.... The biological reality of self-preservation leads
to virtue because in our inalienable need to maintain ourselves
we must, of necessity, help preserve other selves.... The essence
of this transition can be found in Aristotle, but Spinoza ties it
to a biological principlethe mandate of self-preservation. So,
here is the beauty behind the cherished quote [Spinozas earlier
cited proposition], seen from todays perspective: It contains the
foundation for a system of ethical behaviors and that foundation
is neurobiological.53
Several questions, rhetorical or not, come to mind when reading

the preceding line of argument against the background of Spinozas
work. Even forgetting that Spinozas concept of self-preservation is
so vastly wider than its neurobiological counterpart (to the extent
that the former can turn against the latter and demand suicide)even
forgetting thishow is neurobiology going to consider the human
body and mind under a species of eternity, which is Spinozas very
precondition of any discussion of ethics? The constitutive postulate
of neurobiology is to examine living beings precisely under the
categories of space and time. The law Damasio mistakes for the
foundation of ethics, the homeostatic principle of self-preservation,
can at most be valid with regard to the survival of animal life, and
even there, it fails to explain all of it, as his own examples, from the
self-sacrificial bonobo chimpanzees to various other nonhuman spe-
cies, demonstrate,54 let alone when reason enters the picture, with
its postulate of conceiving the universal under a species of eternity.
No matter how much time passes, the neurobiological organism
cannot enter the realm of eternity.
It is no accident that when it comes to the issues of eternity and
the intellectual love of God, Damasio devotes to them no much more
than one page in his book, framing his discussion with the qualifica-
tion that here we are entering something complicated and difficult
to tease apart.55 Nevertheless, this does not prevent Damasio from
quickly concluding that the point of the intellectual love of God is

that through it the individual achieves the most desirable kind of
joy in Spinozas canon, a joy that is perhaps best conceived as pure
feeling almost liberated for once, from its obligate body twin.56 So
the culmination of the entire Ethics is a state, the intellectual love
of God, at which the Mind is, for once, liberated from the Body.
Then we will have to infer that, appearances to the contrary, deep
down, Spinoza was, after all, a crypto-Cartesian. But there is good
reason why Damasio is misled to this conclusion, namely, that neu-
robiology cannot conceive eternity, the liberation from time, but as
a liberation from the Body because neurobiology can address the
body only as an object in time.
As for the institutions that govern human behavior, the bitter
truth is that, however anti-Spinozan (false) Damasios presentation
of the ideal function of institutions might be, it is a more or less ac-
curate (true) description of the actual institutions that throughout
history have attempted to regulate human life, as is evident in the
fact that Spinoza himself had to commit the said suicides. For it
is precisely insofar as the homeostatic mechanism constitutes the
institutions founding principle and ideal (however asymptotically
or only in appearance) that they exclude the realization of ethical
human beingsunless, of course, one is willing or forced to exit
them, whether as a passive outcast or to fight back against the nature
of the institutions. Reason does not recommend this choice, but the
decision to raise the homeostatic machine to the universal ground of
the institutional regulation of social life entails with necessity and, to
repeat Spinozas words, without qualification, that men make agree-
ments, join forces, and have common rights only by deceptioni.e.,
that really they have no common rights. And given that in history,
the mass of mankind, and hence of their institutions, remains
always at about the same pitch of misery, this must be about as true
today as it was in the time of Spinoza.57
Notes
Brain (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2003).
2 Ibid., 53.
3 Ibid., 85.
4 Ibid., 91.
5 Ibid., 209.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., 209, 212.
8 Ibid., 212.
9 Ibid., 213.
10 Ibid., 217; emphasis added.
11 Ibid., 214.
12 Ibid., 71, 14.
13 Ibid., 21213.
14 Ibid., 216.
15 Ibid., 213.
16 Ibid., 21314.
17 Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza, Ethics, in The Collected Works of Spi-
noza, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1985), Ethics II, P13; cited in Damasio, Looking for
Spinoza, 211. Unless otherwise noted, all cited passages from Ethics
are from Curleys edition of the Ethics, and all brackets in citations
are mine. Latin citations of Spinozas Ethics are from the following
edition: Die Ethik (Lateinisch und Deutsch), trans. Jakob Stern (Stut-
tgart, Germany: Reclam, 1990).
18 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 211; Ethics II, P23.
19 Ethics II, P16, P26; Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 212.
20 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 213.
21 Ibid., 209.
22 Ibid., 30.
23 Ibid.; Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. and ed.
James Strachey, with an introduction by Gregory Zilboorg and
Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton, 1961), 6.
24 Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freuds Theory and in the Technique
of Psychoanalysis, 19541955, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Sylvana
Tomaselli (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), 7980.

26 Lacan, Book II, 80.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 79.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 81.
31 Ibid., 84.
32 Ibid., 79.
33 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 260. I address extensively the profound
relation between Spinoza and psychoanalysis in A. Kiarina Kordela,
$urplus: Spinoa, Lacan (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2007).
35 Ibid., 49, 161.
37 Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans.
Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001), 46.
38 Slavoj iek, Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences
(New York: Routledge, 2004), 34.
39 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley
(San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 52.
40 Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (New York: Zone
Books, 1994), 113.
42 Ethics II, P40S2. NS refers to De Nagelate Schriften van Benedict de
Spinoza, the contemporary Dutch translations which appeared
in the other posthumous edition [of the Ethics] in 1677. Edwin
Curley, general preface to Spinoza, Collected Works, x.
43 Parltre is a neologism coined by Lacan to designate the speaking
being in one word made up from the words parler (to speak) and
tre (to be).
44 Slavoj iek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and
Out (New York: Routledge, 1992), 7475.
45 Spinoza, Collected Works, 557n15.
46 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, 46.
47 iek, Organs without Bodies, 34. In one of his discussions of ethics
in this work, iek writes, According to Kant, if one finds oneself
alone in the sea with another survivor of a sunken ship near a
floating piece of wood that can keep only one person afloat, moral
considerations are no longer valid. There is no moral law prevent-
ing me from fighting to death with the other survivor for the place
on the raft; I can engage in it with moral impunity (38n44). In a
footnote elsewhere, I took ieks recapitulation of Kants position
at face value, as my concern was more the internal consistency
within ieks own argument (see Kordela, $urplus, 2007, 147n8).
Assuming that ieks account of Kant is right, then we could say
that Spinozas ethics goes far beyond the Kantian rigor Curley
detects in Spinozas comment on the issue of treachery, that if
reason should recommend that, it would recommend it to all men.
Spinoza, Collected Works, 587n37, and Ethics IV, P72S. Certainly this
statement intimates Kants postulate that the ethical imperative
should be universalizable, but Spinozas primacy of virtue over
self-preservation would have no equivalent in the Kantian ethic, as
Kant would seem to subject everything to the ultimate law of self-
preservation. iek does not give bibliographical reference to the
passage in which Kant is supposed to have advanced the preceding
argument. The sole relevant passage I have found argues effectively
the opposite, indicating, other major differences notwithstanding, a
convergence between Spinoza and Kant with regard to the subordi-
nate role of self-preservation in ethics: There is no casus necessitatis
except in a case where duties, namely an unconditional duty and a
(perhaps very important yet) conditional duty, conflict with each
other, e.g., if it is a matter of preventing some catastrophe to the state
by betraying a man who might stand in the relationship to another
of father and son. This prevention of trouble to the former is an
unconditional duty, whereas preventing misfortune to the latter is
only a conditional duty (namely, insofar as he has not made himself
guilty of a crime against the state). One of the relatives might report
the others plans to the authorities with the utmost reluctance, but
he is compelled by necessity (namely, moral necessity)but if it
is said of someone who, in order to preserve his own life, pushes
another survivor of a shipwreck from his plank, that he has a right
to do so by his (physical) necessity, that is quite false. For to pre-
serve my life is only a conditional duty (if it can be done without
a crime); but not to take the life of another who is committing no
offense against me and does not even lead me into the danger of
losing my life is an unconditional duty. Immanuel Kant, Practical

Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 299n. Albeit largely in a context of a politi-
cal position starkly different than that of Spinoza, Kants general
position on this matter is thoroughly Spinozan: a right of necessity
(ius in casu necessitatis) ..., as a supposed right to do wrong when
in extreme (physical) need, is in any case an absurdity. Ibid., 299.
48 Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 19591960,
ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1992), 270, 280.
49 Ibid., 279.
50 Ibid., 221. There are, of course, innumerous implications regarding
the ideological function of enjoyment, or Spinozas Joy, which are,
however, irrelevant to this line of argument here, but I address some
in Kordela, $urplus, 2007. To avoid confusion, note that enjoyment
may also indicate the presymbolic life substance referred to by
iek in a passage cited earlier.
51 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,
trans. Alan Sheridan, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1981), 59.
52 Ibid., 34.
54 Ibid., 167.
55 Ibid., 276.
56 Ibid.
57 Benedict de Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political
Treatise, trans. and with an introduction by R.H.M. Elwes (New
York: Dover, 1951), 5.
14
A Matter of Life and Death:
Spinoza and Derrida
alexander garca dttmann
For Robert Savage

in proposition 67 of Part IV of his Ethics, Spinoza states that
there is one thought that almost never crosses the mind of the free
human being.1 Thoughts cross our minds more or less frequently.
Whoever proves to be free, however, thinks of death least of all.
The British philosopher Stuart Hampshire warns us against making
light of this statement by reducing it to rhetorical ornament and
ignoring its importance for a Spinozan sense of objectivity.2 The
American philosopher Steven Nadler speaks of a proclamation
and thereby suggests that Spinoza is taking a stance rather than just
stating a thought. In the manner of a forerunner to and herald of
the Enlightenment, Spinoza would be arguing against the supersti-
tious multitude who, moved by hope and fear, worry about what is
to come in an alleged hereafter.3 It is as if the very idea of freedom
were tied up intimately with the infrequency or even absence of the
thought of death, or as if the quantity denoted a quality, a necessary
irrelevance. When we are free, death almost never comes to mind,
and this is necessarily so because of the irrelevance of the thought
of death, not for the dubious kind of freedom that renounces the
arduous and often disappointing endeavor of thinking but for the kind
of freedom that expresses itself, and must express itself, in thinking,
in a certain understanding of things and their necessity, in a grasping
of the laws that govern nature. In other words, the thought of death
351
352 A LEXANDE R GARCA DTTMANN
is not even a thought or is a thought awaiting further qualification.

Doubtless the philosopher might have something to say about
death, or in the case of Spinoza, about the mortality of the body.
Spinoza says that there is no reason why the actual transformation
of the body into a corpse should be the only occasion for speaking
of death. Each time the rule that determines the relationship be-
tween rest and movement is altered, the disposition of bodily parts
is transformed. When this happens, it can be difficult to ascertain
whether a human being is still the same being we have encountered
before (Ethics IV, P39S). The first example Spinoza provides is of an
unnamed Spanish poet afflicted with amnesia and hence unable to
recognize the works he has written as his own. Spinozas second
example seems to imply that the causes for the evolution of the body
and the mind are not merely internal. It refers us to the changes that
take place during the passage from childhood to maturity. To the
extent that the mind is the idea of the body, that thinking forms an
idea of whatever affects the body, and that our self is the idea that
we have of our body and of our mind insofar as something has an
effect on them, as Gilles Deleuze puts it,4 it is clear that these trans-
formations have a bearing beyond the exteriority of bodily parts. The
German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, not much of a Spinozist,
claims in his Meditations on Metaphysics that the biological
dimension of death encompasses not only the physical existence of
people of old age but also their selves, everything that once made
them into human beings. People of old age appear to disintegrate,
to fall apart, to crumble away, even though they might not be prone
to illness or violent intrusions.5 In a lecture course from the late
1970s and early 1980s, Deleuze reminds us that for Spinoza, death
is always something that hits us from outside, as it were, and that
no thought could be more alien, more external to Spinozas views,
than the thought of a death drive.6
Thus there is little doubt that Spinoza has something to say about
death. Yet the thought of death itself results from an affect of fear
and is more like the idea of an uncertain image or of the unfathom-
able way in which our bodies will be affected externally. Whoever
thinks of death, and does so frequently, has an axe to grind. It is not
surprising that Spinoza dismisses suicide, to which the recurring
thought of death may point, by denouncing the lack of power of
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH 353
those who contemplate the possibility of putting a willful end to

their lives. The semblance of willfulness obfuscates that the suicide
is entirely overwhelmed by external causes opposed to his nature
and its necessity (Ethics IV, P17S). He is a slave to fear. I may turn
into a being that bears little resemblance to the being I was before.
I may lack an awareness of who I was up to the moment in which I
became a different being. But this becoming is not inscribed in the
necessity of my nature. Suicide gives way to the law of the other,7
to use an expression from Pierre Macherey.
One could be tempted to push the argument further and maintain
that the thought of death recurs frequently precisely because it is not
simply a thought, an insight dependent solely on itself, but remains
determined by a fear of dying. Both the inability to subsume things
under the laws of nature and the inability to comprehend their es-
sence intuitively lead to a necessity different from the necessity of
the substance. It is the necessity of destiny that manifests itself in
the fear of dying, in the uncontrollable frequency with which the
thought of death recurs. As long as it is not related to the substance
whose existence stems from itself, the law always splits into two, into
the law of ones own and the law of the other. Such an interpretation
of Spinozas proposition would entail that the fear of dying is in a
sense exemplary of the affect of fear, of a diminishing of the same
power that, when increased, liberates us from destiny by eliciting a
rational conception of cause and effect and an intuitive comprehen-
sion of essence.
Two negative and two positive conclusions can be drawn at this
point. On the one hand, it would make no sense to consider the
vanishing of the thought of death from the free mans mind as the
result of a decision to think of death only occasionally, just as it would
make no sense to assume that the free man contents himself with
following some moral device or prescription that tells him that it is
better not to think of death all too often. On the other hand, free-
dom must be considered as an act of liberation that allows human
beings to wrest themselves from the sway of affects, or passions,
and the illusory necessity of destiny, just as it must be assumed to
be a comportment of the mind toward life after the liberating ef-
fort has succeeded. At the very end of his Ethics, Spinoza stresses
that freedom is never a given and that, to begin with, we are not
354 A LEXANDE R GARCA DTTMANN
free. In the part on human bondage, he even quotes a line from the
Metamorphoses: I can see what is better, acknowledge it, and keep
adhering to what proves worse. A successful liberation from affects,
however, engenders a form of wisdom that consists in reflecting
upon life rather than death and disclosing the existence of a law, or
a necessary link, where unpredictable contingencies used to hold the
reins. This form of wisdom is free inasmuch as it is not guided by
a preceding fear. The free and wise man thinks of the preservation
of his being, of ways of acting that will work out to his advantage
and prevent him from succumbing to whatever might impede the
recognition of the laws necessity and cloud the intuition of the es-
sence of things, diminishing, as a consequence, his power to exist.
Spinoza insists on our ignorance in the face of the bodys capacity
for acting. He is adamant that bodily affections can be related to the
idea of God. But although the body is never entirely destroyed and
its idea always subsists through the fatal encounter with external
causes, the mind is able to relate to necessity in a way in which the
body cannot. The wise man exists without ever ceasing to be. He
has freed the law from the other and touched on reality or being
itself. When Schelling, in the lectures of his Philosophy of Revelation,
dismisses Spinozas doctrine for conceiving of the necessity of being
in logical terms alone and thus lacking an answer to the question,
why is there something rather than nothing? it is this sense of reality
that he, too, has in mind.8
The claim that the fear of dying is in truth a fear of life can be
found in Machereys extensive commentary on the fifth part of the
Ethics.9 We are now in a position to understand this claim and to render
the statement or the proclamation concerning the frequency of the
thought of death more intelligible. Indeed, it would be impossible to
decipher the fear of dying that triggers the recurrence of the thought
of death as a symptom of a fear of life and hence as a resistance to
life itself, if freedom did not consist in an act of liberation and in a
form of wisdom. This distinction entails that the act of liberation
from affectivity, the transformation of passions into affects of self-
affection and self-determination, must contain some trace of the
wisdom yet to be attained and that, conversely, no wisdom can be
achieved without a preceding liberation. Only if I am already on the
way toward achieving wisdom will my fear of death be a fear of life,
and only if my fear of death is a fear of life will it be a fear of death

in the first place. Jacobi, who started the famous debate on Spinoz-
ism in German philosophy, anticipates Schellings critical arguments
by charging Spinoza with remaining caught up in the sphere of the
logical or philosophical and neglecting the heterogeneity between
the positive and the negative, between faith and the fatalism inherent
in all reasoning. How can we strive to obtain certainty if we are
not acquainted with it from the beginning?, Jacobi asks.10 Yet, in a
sense, it is this very structure of presupposition, a kind of herme-
neutic or performative circle, that Jacobi shares with Spinoza in the
moment that he rejects his doctrine. Freedom that did not consist in
a preceding act of liberation, that was not something to be accom-
plished, would not deserve its name, at least not if it is to qualify a
behavior or a comportment toward the world. As a given, it would
be indiscernible and coincide with mere necessity. The freedom of
the substance is not the freedom of its finite mode, of a mode that
comes close to the substances freedom only when it has liberated
itself from the law of the other. Thus freedom must presuppose
itself, just as understanding must, for instance, in the guise of faith.
In Spinoza, the presupposition of freedom and the presupposition
of understanding are one. Turning to an apparently trivial remark
can elucidate the point further. Very few people, Deleuze observes
in his lecture course, are complete idiots, for everybody understands
something.11 This remark supplements and completes the picture
of eternal life that Deleuze draws in the final pages of his study
on Spinozas concept of expression. The one who fears death has
a reason for doing so.12 He has not wrested himself from the sway
of passive affects and still has something to lose, for once the rela-
tionship of the extensive parts of his body has changed so radically
that the transformation has amounted to a destruction, he will no
longer be able to suffer and will maybe have an affect such as fear. In
Michael Powells and Emeric Pressburgers film A Matter of Life and
Death, the scenes set in heaven are shot in black and white. Heaven is
represented as a legalistic hell, hardly a view of Spinozan inspiration
given that, in the Ethics, God, the one substance, is certainly not a
legislator, a supreme judge, or the president of a court of law who
could inflict the most terrible punishment on men and make them
fear a death worse than death. But the idea that a human being who
356 ALEXANDE R GARCA DTTMAN N
has died is granted a second chance and allowed to return to his or

her former life seems like a humorous echo of the idea that a free
person almost never thinks of death, at least if we take this idea to
mean that men have a task to accomplish.
The act of liberation by which men gain a sense of reality that
makes them think of death least of all ultimately puts an end to the
laws splitting into the law of ones own and the law of the other. It
is as if the law were restored to the infinite nature of the substance
from which it follows. In the chapter of his Theological-Political Treatise
that discusses the divine law and establishes a difference between
the laws of nature and the laws posited by mankind, Spinoza notes
that Christ had an intellectual understanding of revealed contents
and perceived them by means of pure thinking, not by way of
words and images. He distinguishes those who, incapable of such
an understanding, have access to revealed contents in the shape of a
law to be obeyed from those who can see these contents as eternal
truths and are thus free of the laws bondage.13 There is a differ-
ence between knowing the law and knowing its letter. To know the
law, a knowledge that Macherey interprets as an active engagement
or comportment toward the world rather than a form of contem-
plative intellectualism, is to have an insight into its necessity. The
one who has such an insight is not subject to it anymore without,
however, suspending its validity and exempting himself from the law.
The free man is not an anarchist. Does he not think of death least
of all because he can relate knowingly to the law inscribed within
his nature and because his knowledge can restore it to the infinite
nature of the substance?
In the beginning and at the very end of his long essay H.C. for
Life, That Is to Say ..., Jacques Derrida writes that the difference
between him and the work of his friend Helne Cixous lies in that
he has always been said to side with death, whereas she has always
chosen to side with life: Between her and me it all seems to be a
matter of life or death.14
Of course, Derrida does not simply mention this view, or return
to it, in order to confirm and ratify it. Early on in the essay, he shows
that in truth, it is impossible to discriminate between life and death
as if they were two sides that can be opposed to each other or two
opposite shores that face one another. When it comes to death, there
is no side we could prefer to some other side. We cannot take sides

here and hence find ourselves deciding each time in favor of life,
regardless of how important, how serious, how grave the decision
might be. Does Derrida imply in this context that even suicide is a
decision for life, though probably a decision that does not know itself ?
It is precisely because life is not the opposite of death that it does not
remain untouched. In Of Grammatology, Derrida characterizes the
organization of life as an economy of death. In his essay on Cixous,
he refers to his definition of diffrance in Speech and Phenomena when
he claims that life is infinite, without some other side that could be
opposed to it, and yet finite, that is limited by one side only, the side
that it itself forms, as it were. It is as if death had a double effect on
life, making it form a side or create a shore and allowing it at the
same time to stretch infinitely. A conventional decision requires a
number of identifiable alternatives. But where it is all a matter of life
and death, there is no alternative, no option that can be privileged
over a different option. Does the fact that every decision must be
a decision in favor of life mean that no decision can ever be made?
From a Spinozan point of view, the answer would be affirmative.
The freedom of will, to which decision making belongs, proves to
be an illusion, a lack of knowledge with regard to causes. We cannot
make a decision because we are always already on the side of life,
whether we know it or not. However, such a point of view would
also entail that life can appear to be infinitely finite only from the
limited perspective of the man who still thinks too much of death
because he has not attained the freedom and understanding conferred
by the second and third kinds of knowledge. The side of life is not a
side. For Derrida, then, the necessity of a decision being essentially a
decision for life does not invalidate the possibility and the necessity of
making decisionsquite the contrary. Life, like diffrance, designates
undecidability itself,15 the relationship to something that interrupts
all relations and that, for this very reason, again and again calls for a
relation or a decision. We must take sides where, by definition, no
side can be taken, not because there are no sides but because we are
already on one side and cannot be on any other side. Ask why we
need to keep insisting on the notion of a one-sided border here, a
shore-facing nothingness, in Kantian terminology, a barrier and not a
limit, and you may well be on the way toward becoming a Spinozist.
358 ALEXANDE R GARCA DTTMANN
To maintain that life is finite in its boundlessness or that the essence

of finitude lies in infinite diffrance amounts to maintaining that a
decision is the expression of an irreducible undecidability and that
undecidability renders decision making possible in the first place, just
as life allows for experience, assuming that experience is always the
experience of a border, the crossing of borders that forever stays on
a border, not, as a Spinozist would claim, the experience of eternity.
In short, Derrida does not conceive of life as substance, whether in
a Spinozan or a Hegelian sense.16 It is unavoidable to have an axe
to grind, though in the instant we want to rely on our agenda, we
will discover that there is none, that it keeps vanishing, because to
live means to corroborate or to revoke decisions in ever-shrinking
time intervals, especially it being all a matter of life and death, an
urgent matter of life or death, decisions as to who we are. In the
end, perhaps, a Derridian can rely on an agenda as little as a Spinoz-
ist can, though in one case, the lack will be interpreted as a sign of
knowledge, even wisdom, and in the other case, not so. On the one
hand, we give in to death if we do not make decisions constantly,
harass others and ourselves; on the other hand, we give in to death,
think of it too many times, if we continue to believe that we can and
that we should make decisions or that anything truly relevant will
depend on such behavior. Both for the Spinozist and the Derridian,
it is all a matter of life or death rather than a matter of life and death.
One could say that the act of deciding is a false act of liberation that
leads to the thought of death becoming entrenched even deeper in
our being. Derrida does not use the concept of freedom often, if at
all. It could be argued, however, that for him, freedom would consist
in the necessity of making a decision in the absence of a set of reli-
able criteria, outside a given framework and without another side
to which one could turn for further orientation. The celestial court
in the film A Matter of Life and Death, to which unlimited resources
are available, is not a place for decisions or resembles too much an
earthly court for its own good.
To the extent that the thought of death can recur, we can relate to
life, that is, we can seek to live truly, as Macherey phrases it when
he tries to speak the last word of Spinozan ethics.17 To the extent
that, as an economy of death, the organization of life exceeds any
attempt at grasping its law, and that grasping its law would entail the
possibility of crossing over to some other, opposite side or border,

or of crossing back and forth between shores facing each other, we
can relate to life, prefer life to death, and try to live on in the most
intense possible manner, as Derrida says in the last interview he
gave before he died.18 To the same extent, however, to the extent
that life cannot be opposed to death because it is constitutively in
excess of itself, finite in its infinity, we cannot relate to life and prefer
life to death or choose death over life. The moment we relate to
something that interrupts the relationship and in doing so calls for
us to relate to it nonetheless, we already live, we are already alive
and in the midst of life, on its side, trying to catch up with ourselves
while running along the shores.
Now, if we take into account that Derrida depicts the law as a
forbidden place,19 a place to which we have no access, and that
he explains how the law must be forbidding and command respect
for it to function as the law, withdrawing when we try to grasp and
understand it, having the effect of the law only inasmuch as it re-
mains an essentially unrecognizable cause, we will be in a position
not simply to draw a structural analogy between life and the law as
necessarily interrupted relationships but to identify the law and life
on the grounds of their ambiguity. The law, Derrida writes, forbids
us to access it, to understand fully why it makes the claims it makes
or why it states whatever it states, by contradicting itself and placing
human beings in a contradiction, in a situation of double bind. This
seems to hold true for the law as an ethical or legal instance. In nature,
one could assert that, in the wake of Derridas discourse and against
the background of Spinozas claims, the explanation of a law refers
us back to another law, to another cause, to another condition that
has not been understood yet, in a regression that forestalls totaliza-
tion. The law, which necessarily contradicts itself, creates or provokes
undecidability. It confronts us with demands that are incompatible,
whether because one demand excludes the other or because one
demand is recognizable and the other carries us beyond what we
can recognize. This is how, in Force of Law, Derrida describes the
relationship between the law [le droit] and justice, between the law
that has been posited or laid down in a historical development and
the law that addresses itself to us without allowing for a deduction,
a justification, or, possibly, a transformation. Thus, in the end, the
360 A LE XANDER GARCA DTTMAN N
law remains a forbidden and forbidding place as it hovers between

a relative recognizability and a relative unrecognizability. It escapes
our grasp because it gives us something, lets us relate to it, and does
not leave us with nothing. We live under the law. Liberation from
its bondage would render the very notion of life meaningless. Yet,
although the law accords us some freedom, the freedom to comport
ourselves toward life through decisions we make, it also bars us
from ever touching on necessity itself, that is, on reality or being.
So it is not astonishing to hear Derrida say that he never feels more
haunted by the necessity of dying than in the instants of happi-
ness and pleasure.20
You use the concept of necessity, but you deprive yourself of the
means of conceiving of necessity in the first place. You cannot really
understand what necessity, or the law, designates because you believe
that by introducing a distinction between two sides, a temporal and
an eternal aspect, you can explain finitude with respect to the infinity
of the substance, one enveloping the other, and control the thought
of death. You compromise necessity by comprehending it, as it were.
In our gigantomachia, you are the idealist, for to really understand
what it means to speak of necessity, or the law, I must acknowledge
that I cannot touch on reality or being itself.
For you, the point at which the validity of the law is both con-
firmed and suspended is a point of self-contradiction and hence of
turmoil at which it proves impossible to touch on reality or being.
The law reaffirms itself in its very exteriority. For me, this point is
the point at which my intelligence and the affect that I call the intel-
lectual love of God allow me to touch on reality or being, that is, to
stop relating to the law as something that I can only obey, to cease
thinking of death and to look at life under the aspect of eternity.
When I succeed in looking at life under the aspect of eternity, my
individuality, too, is both confirmed and suspended, confirmed in
that I am never more active and self-determining than at this stage
and suspended in that I come to know the whole of nature, or some-
thing of it, and feel united with it. Now I would like to ask you the
following question. We both side with life in a diverging manner.
Can this decisive divergence between you and me be a matter of
decision, as if, having reached the same point as I appear to have
reached, you had decided to subordinate the aspect of eternity to
the aspect of temporality? I wonder whether you are not a secret

idealist. Do you not shrink away from your own courage when you
conceive of the law as continuously holding back and keeping itself
in an unattainable reserve? This would explain why you still think
of death, why you do so in the instant in which you experience life
at its most intense, to use your own words. To conceive of necessity
really must mean to set oneself free. Although you claim on several
occasions that there is no metalanguage, for example, in your essay
on Cixous, and that metalanguage is nothing but an effect, you do
after all formulate the law of the law. To put it differently, you do
formulate the necessity of remaining under the forbidden, forbid-
ding, contradictory law, without understanding it. Thus you claim
an understanding of the law, at least implicitly. You cannot relate to
the law in the same way as before once you have understood that
the relationship to it is, by necessity, an interrupted one. And do you
not, in the film that bears your name as its title, refer to an experience
during which something imposed itself on you as self-evident, in a
moment of enlightenment and understanding in which you did see
things under the aspect of eternity, if you do not mind me resorting
to my own vocabulary? You had finished writing a long text, which
you then included in Of Grammatology. Perhaps all you did was to
shout yes! silently or audibly. I understand you.
Notes
1 The edition of Spinozas works used here is Complete Works, trans.
Samuel Shirley, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett,
2002).
2 Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza and Spinozism, rev ed. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2005), 126, 128.
3 Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 349.
4 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza et le problme de lexpression (Paris: Minuit,
1968), 131.
5 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt am Main, Ger-
many: Suhrkamp, 1975), 364.
6 Gilles Deleuze, En medio de Spinoza (Buenos Aires: Cactus, 2003), 150.
362 A LE XANDER GARCA DTTMANN
7 Pierre Macherey, Introduction lthique de SpinozaLa cinquime

partie: les voies de la libration (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1997), 56.
8 F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung (1858), repr. Ausgewhlte
Werke (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1990), 1:242.
9 Macherey, Introduction, 195.
10 F.H. Jacobi, ber die Lehre des Spinoza (Hamburg, Germany: Meiner,
2000), 113. On Jacobis misunderstanding of Spinozas doctrine, see
chapter 4 of Eckart Frster, Die fnfundzwanzig Jahre der Philosophie
(Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Vittorio Klostermann, forthcoming)
(English trans. to be published by Harvard University Press).
11 Deleuze, En medio de Spinoza, 145.
12 Deleuze, Spinoza et le problme de lexpression, 297.
13 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, in Spinoza, Complete Works,
chap. 4.
14 Jacques Derrida, H.C. pour la vie, cest dire . . . (Paris: Galile, 2002),
136; see also p. 36.
15 Ibid., 46.
16 Hegel disagrees with Spinoza on matters of life and death. In his
mind, it is not enough to acknowledge that next to a substance
which proves to be empty and dead, there is a world of determi-
nations which lives off its own negativity. Pierre Macherey, Hegel
ou Spinoza (Paris: ditions La Dcouverte, 1990), 143.
17 Macherey, Introduction, 187.
18 Jacques Derrida, Apprendre vivre enfin. Entretien avec Jean Birnbaum
(Paris: Galile/Le Monde, 2005), 55.
19 Jacques Derrida, Prjugs. Devant la loi, in La facult de juger
(Paris: Minuit, 1985), 121.
20 Derrida, Apprendre vivre enfin.
Contributors
Alain Badiou is professor at the cole Normale Suprieure and also

teaches at the Collge International de Philosophie. His many books
translated into English include Manifesto for Philosophy; Deleuze: The
Clamor of Being (Minnesota, 2000); Ethics: An Essay on the Understand-
ing of Evil; Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy; Saint
Paul: The Foundation of Universalism; Handbook of Inaesthetics; Being
and Event; The Century; The Concept of Model; The Meaning of Sarkozy;
Logics of Worlds: Being and Event, Volume 2; and Theory of the Subject.
Mieke Bal is Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

Professor based at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.
Her areas of interest range from biblical and classical antiquity to
seventeenth-century and contemporary art and modern literature,
feminism, and migratory culture. Her many books include A Mieke
Bal Reader, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities, Reading Rembrandt:
Beyond the Word-Image Opposition, Loving Yusuf: Conceptual Travels
from Present to Past, and Narratology. Mieke Bal is also a video artist.
Her experimental documentaries on migration include A Thousand
and One Days, Colony, and the installation Nothing Is Missing. She is
currently making her first fiction film, Mre folle. Her feature film A
Long History of Madness is being exhibited internationally. Occasion-
ally, she acts as an independent curator.
Cesare Casarino is professor of cultural studies and comparative

literature at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of nu-
merous essays on literature, cinema, and philosophy as well as the
monograph Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx, and Conrad in Crisis
363
364 C ONTRI BUTORS
(Minnesota, 2002). He is the coeditor (with Saree Makdisi and Rebecca

Karl) of Marxism beyond Marxism and coauthor (with Antonio Negri)
of In Praise of the Common: A Conversation on Philosophy and Politics
(Minnesota, 2008). At present, he is working on a book manuscript
on Gilles Deleuzes two-volume study of the cinema as well as a
book manuscript on Spinoza and Marx.
Justin Clemens has published extensively on philosophy and psycho-

analysis and is the coeditor of many scholarly anthologies, including
The Work of Giorgio Agamben (with Nick Heron and Alex Murray) and
The Praxis of Alain Badiou (with Paul Ashton and A.J. Bartlett). He is
also the coeditor of The Jacqueline Rose Reader (with Ben Naparstek)
and Alain Badiou: Key Concepts (with A.J. Bartlett). He teaches at the
University of Melbourne.
Simon Duffy is lecturer in the department of philosophy at the

University of Sydney (Australia). He is the author of The Logic of
Expression: Quality, Quantity, and the Intensity of Spinoza, Hegel, and
Deleuze, and he is the editor of Virtual Mathematics: The Logic of
Difference. He has published articles in the International Journal of
Philosophical Studies, the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology,
Paragraph, and Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. He has
also translated a number of Gilles Deleuzes Seminars on Spinoza,
which are available online at http://www.webdeleuze.com/.
Alexander Garca Dttmann is professor of philosophy and visual

culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. His most recent pub-
lications include Philosophy of Exaggeration; Visconti: Insights into Flesh
and Blood; and Derrida und ich: Das Problem der Dekonstruktion.
Sebastian Egenhofer is Laurenz Professor for Contemporary Art at

the University of Basel and member of the NCCR eikones/iconic
criticism in Basel. His interests include contemporary art and theory,
nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernism, the theory of perspec-
tive in early Renaissance Italy, Hercules Segers, and the emergence of
Dutch landscape painting. Recent publications include the monograph
AbstraktionKapitalismusSubjektivitt: Die Wahrheitsfunktion des Werks
in der Moderne and several articles such as Die Abstraktion und die
CON TRIBUTORS 365
Topik des Imaginren in Claudia Blmle and Armin Schfer, eds.,

StrukturFigurKontur and Figures of Defiguration: Four Theses on
Abstraction in Texte zur Kunst.
Arthur J. Jacobson is the Max Freund Professor of Litigation and

Advocacy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva Uni-
versity. With Stephen B. Smith, he has edited Spinozas Law, a volume
of conference papers on Spinozas legal theory. Among other books,
he is the author (with Bernhard Schlink) of Weimar: A Jurisprudence
of Crisis. He has published articles in legal theory.
A. Kiarina Kordela is professor of German and cultural studies

at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her publications
include $urplus: Spinoza, Lacan and several articles on a broad va-
riety of subjects ranging from German literature, such as Goethe
(in Modern Language Studies) and Kaf kaCorngold (in Literary Pa-
ternityLiterary Friendship), to philosophy, psychoanalysis, critical
theory, sexual difference, film, and biopoliticswith a focus on
Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Lacan, Foucault, and Deleuzein collections
and journals such as European Film Theory, The Dreams of Interpreta-
tion, Angelaki, Cultural Critique, Parallax, Rethinking Marxism, and
Political Theory.
Michael Mack is reader in English studies and medical humanities

at Durham University. He has published two books: Anthropology
and Memory: Elias Canetti and Franz Baermann Steiners Responses to
the Shoah and German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism
of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses, the latter of which was
short-listed for the Koret Jewish Book Award 2004. He has published
over thirty articles in international journals across the disciplines
of English, history, philosophy, theology, anthropology, and criti-
cal legal studies. He is completing a book manuscript on Spinozist
self-preservation and self-destruction titled Thinking with Spinoza:
Toward an Inclusive Universalism. He also has a forthcoming book,
How Literature Changes the Way We Think.
Warren Montag is professor of English and comparative litera-

ture at Occidental College in Los Angeles. His books include Louis
366 C ONTRI BUTORS
Althusser and Bodies, Masses, and Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries
as well as the edited volume (with Ted Stolze) The New Spinoza
(Minnesota, 1998).
Antonio Negri, who has taught at the University of Padua and the
University of Paris, is the author of more than thirty books, including
Empire and Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire as well
as Labor of Dionysus (with Michael Hardt, Minnesota, 1994). He has
published two books on Spinoza, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of
Spinozas Metaphysics (Minnesota, 1990) and Subversive Spinoza: (Un)
Contemporary Variations, while Spinozas thought informs much of his
other writings such as Time for Revolution and Insurgencies: Constituent
Power and the Modern State (Minnesota, 1999). Other recent books in
English are The Porcelain Workshop: For a New Grammar of Politics and
Political Descartes: Reason, Ideology, and the Bourgeois Project.
Christopher Norris is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy

at the University of Cardiff, Wales. He has written numerous books
on various aspects of philosophy and the history of ideas, among
them Spinoza and the Origins of Modern Critical Theory. More recent
works include Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism; Philosophy
of Language and the Challenge to Scientific Realism; Language, Logic, and
Epistemology; On Truth and Meaning; Platonism, Music, and the Listen-
erss Share; and Fiction, Philosophy, and Literary Theory. His latest are
Alain Badious Being Event: A Readers Guide (2009) and Re-Thinking the
Cogito: Naturalism, Reason, and the Venture of Thought (2010). His books
have been translated into ten languages, and he has also taught and
lectured at many universities around the world, including periods as
visiting professor at the City University of New York, the University
of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and the School of Criticism and
Theory at Dartmouth College.
Anthony Uhlmann is professor in the Writing and Society Research

Group, University of Western Sydney. He is the author of Beckett
and Poststructuralism and Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image
and coedited The Ethics of Arnold Geulincx (with Han van Ruler and
Martin Wilson). His new book, Thinking in Literature, was published
in 2011. He is the editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies.
CO NT RIBUTORS 367
Dimitris Vardoulakis is senior lecturer at the University of West-

ern Sydney. His publications include The Doppelgnger: Literatures
Philosophy. Other edited or coedited volumes include Benjamin and
Heidegger, Kaf kas Cages, The Political Animal, and After Blanchot. He
is the author of numerous articles published in English and Greek,
and he has translated two books into Greek. His book Sovereignity
and Its Other is forthcoming.
Index
Adorno, Theodor, 11014, 303n27, Austin, J. L., 17

352, 361n5 Averroes, 67, 88n13, 89n17, 114
Aesop, 68
Agamben, Giorgio, n87n11, Bachelard, Gaston, 26, 36n62
222n19 Badiou, Alain, xviixviii, xxxi, 9,
Althusser, Louis, xv, 4, 6, 9, 1315, 51, 79, 91n28, 259n5, 33132,
18, 22, 2627, 29, 32n4, 33n24, 341, 348n37, 348n46
35n33, 37n63, 39, 128n1, Bal, Mieke, xxii, 300n5, 300n6,
164, 166, 176n7, 17980, 217, 401n8, 401n9, 401n15
218n1, 219n3, 234n79, 234n80, Balibar, tienne, xv, xxvin2, 4,
234n81, 24041, 259n7 6, 11, 18, 2122, 2629, 32n1,
Anaximander, 67, 87n13 33n5, 35n29, 35n33, 35n49,
Antisthenes, 68 92n29, 99, 112, 123n1, 131n32,
Appuhn, Charles, 340 218n3, 226n36, 229n50,
Apuleius, 86n10 234n79, 303n30
Aquinas, Thomas, 67, 87n13, Barthes, Roland, 161n17
1056 Bayle, Pierre, xii, xiii, 79, 92n30
Aristotle, 1617, 42, 67, 68, 82, Beckett, Samuel, 263, 26870,
86n9, 87n13, 132n40, 19697, 274n12, 274n13, 274n14
199, 201, 205, 226n37, 227n45 Beeckman, Isaac, 83
Armstrong, D. M., 35n50, 94n34 Benesch, Otto, 284
Asher, Michael, xxi, 247, 25952, Benjamin, Andrew, 302n22
255, 261n18 Benjamin, Walter, 69, 70, 87n11,
Augustine, 1056 303n27
Augustus de Morgan, 67 Bennett, Jonathan, 58, 10, 13, 18,
Aurelius, Marcus, 231n62 30, 3335, 37n68
369
370 I NDE X
Benton, Ted, 37n64 Clment, Bruno, 271, 275n21

Bergson, Henri, 76, 239, 259n2 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 264
Bernard, Claude, 129n15 Colerus, Johan, 223n26
Bernard, Emile, 275n18 Colie, Rosalie L., 174n2
Beuys, Joseph, 251 Cordingley, Anthony, 274n1
Beveridge, Karl, 261n17 Cottingham, John, 66, 84n2,
Bible, the, xx, 1034, 132, 141, 150, 91n25, 100, 128n6, 129n7
163, 166, 170, 172, 280, 282, Crane, Tim, 35n50
28486, 288, 29798 Curley, Edwin, xv, xxvi n10, 34n22,
Bieser, Frederick C., xiii, xxvin4, 264, 325, 33940
32n3
Bird, Graham, 37n71 Damasio, Antonio, xvi, xxiii,
Blumenberg, Hans, 115, 132n40 xxvin17, 7, 2829, 34n17,
Blyenbergh, William van, 119 37n67, 102, 128n14,
Borges, J. L. 86n3 133n45,n52, 32131, 336,
Borradori, Giovanna, 131n30, 34042, 34437, 347n1, 347n2,
134n55 347n3, 347n4, 347n5, 347n6,
Bourbaki, Nicolas, 88n15 347n7, 347n8, 347n9, 347n10,
Boxel, 293 347n11, 347n12, 347n13,
Brhier, mile, 274n8 347n14, 347n15, 347n16,
Bresson, Robert, 88n15 347n18, 347n19, 347n20,
Buchloch, Benjamin, 261n21 347n21, 347n22, 348n25,
Buridan, Jean, xviii, 66, 67, 8285, 348n33, 348n34, 348n35,
87n13, 95n43, 95n44 350n53, 350n54, 350n55,
Burn, Ian, 261n17 350n56
Burton, Robert G., 90n20 Dante Alighieri, 67
Darwin, Charles, 102, 129n15,
Cage, John, 260n11 33031
Caillois, Roger, 340 Davidson, Donald, 6, 1923, 25,
Caird, John, 78, 91n25 31, 33n8, 35
Canetti, Elias, 110, 131n29 Debord, Guy, 229n50, 241
Carroll, Lewis, 67 Deleuze, Gilles, xii, xviii, xx,
Casarino, Casare, xx, 221n4, xxvi n11, 46, 9, 11, 15, 18, 21,
226n29, 227n37, 227n40 2629, 33n5, 3537, 3964,
Cassin, Barbara, 84n3 7 82, 88n16, 90n22, 92n29,
Cassuto, Philippe, 175n17 93n34, 94n40, 95n41, 99, 102,
Cavaills, Jean, 39 118, 12122, 128n1, 233n46,
Czanne, Paul, 27071, 275n18 135n48, 180, 18586, 2029,
Chalmers, David J., 36n60 215, 218n3, 222n16, 222n17,
Christenson, Jason, 218 222n18, 222n19, 223n25,
Cixious, Helne, 35657, 361 225n27, 225n 8, 226n28,
Clemens, Justin, xviii, xix 229n51, 229n 52, 229n53,
IND EX 371
230n53, 230n54, 230n55, Euclid, 86n8, 268

230n56, 231n60, 231n61, Ezra, Ibn, 165
231n62, 231n63, 231n64,
232n72, 233n72, 233n73, Faulkner, William, 272, 275n22
233n74, 234n82, 23738, 289, Fechner, Gustav T., 327
243, 259n2, 259n4, 260n12, Feiner, Shmuel, 130n18
261n23, 264, 268, 270, 274n11, Feuer, Lewis Samuel, 28, 32n1,
275n17, 27879, 296, 300n4, 37n66
33133, 343n39, 343n40, 352, Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, xiii
355, 361n4, 361n6, 362n11, Fonsecca, Aboabde, 223n26
362n12 Foucault, Michel, 230n53, 260n10
Democritus, 18 Fraser, Andrea, 255
Derrida, Jacques, xxiiixxiv, 6, Freud, Sigmund, 102, 129n15, 286,
1617, 34n15, 35n38, 35n39, 32731, 244, 247n23
35n40, 73, 87n12, 88n16, 111,
123, 291, 301n14, 331, 35660, Galileo Galilei, 83
362n14, 362n15, 362n18, Garret, Aaron V., 127, 134n58,
362n19 134n59
Descartes, Ren, xviii, xix, 2, 78, Garrett, Don, 33n8, 128n3
11, 31, 44, 46, 80, 83, 84n3, Gaswuet, Joaquim, 271, 275n19
100120, 128n6, 130n19, Gataker, Thomas, 67
130n24, 132n40, 132n44, Gatens, Moira, xvi, 32n3, 132n42,
133n44, 133n48, 191, 227n39, 292, 201n16
230n58, 324 Gebhardt, Carl, 156n1, 156n2,
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 317 156n3, 156n4, 156n5, 156n6,
Donagan, Alan, 6, 10, 13, 33n8, 156n7, 156n8, 156n9, 157
34n27, 35n31 Gersonides, 156
Donaldson, Margaret, 36n51 Ghazali, Al-, 67, 88n13
Duchamp, Marcel, 24555 Gillespie, Michael Allen., 115,
Duffy, Simon, xviii, xxi, 62n3, 64n34 132n41
Duhuit, George, 269 Gillespie, S., 92n28
Durant, Will, 65 Godard, Jean-Luc, 292
Dttman, Alexander Garcia, xxiii Gdel, Kurt, 91n28
Goodchild, Philip, 130n27, 134n55
Egenhofer, Sebastian, xxi, 261n14, Greenblatt, Stephen, 269, 275n16
302n21 Grene, Marjorie, 33n8, 36n54, 215,
Eldred, Michael, 237 218n3, 219n3, 226n28, 232n73,
Eliot, George, xvi, xxvin18, 264 233n72, 233n73
Epictetus, 231n62 Guattari, Flix, 35n37, 243, 264,
Epicurus, 18 274n5
Epimenides, 70 Guroult, Martial, xiv, xxvin9, 39
Erasmus, Desiderius, 294 Guyer, Paul, 37n71
372 I NDE X
Hacking, Ian, 36n54 James, William, 129n5

Hampshire, Stuart, 5, 30, 33n8, Jameson, Fredric, 179, 182,
37n69, 351, 261n2 221n10, 221n11, 221n12,
Hanna, Robert, 37n72 221n28
Hardt, Micheal, xvi, xxvi n14, Janouch, Gustav, xxiv, xxvin19
xxvi n15, 219n3, 220n3, 231n40 Judaism, 93, 99100
Heartfield, John, 251 Judd, Donald, xxi, 24748, 251,
Heck, Paul, 301n13 261n17
Heidegger, Martin, xxiixxiii,
25052, 261n19, 30818, 319n8, Kaf ka, Franz, xxivxxv, 34n18,
319n9, 319n10, 362n16 303n27
Heine, Heinrich, 69, 86n10, 264 Kant, Immanuel, 8, 11, 1617,
Heraclitus, 68, 86n9 3031, 67, 99101, 11415,
Hirschhorn, Thomas, xvi, xxi, 237, 128n10, 161, 219n3, 239, 244,
242, 247, 251, 25456, 260n8, 341, 34850n47
261n22 Karatani, Kojin, 18183, 221n9
Hobbes, Thomas, xviii, xix, 77, Kaufman, Eleanor, 226n28
7980, 83, 87n11, 93n31, 93n33, Kaye, S.M., 85n5
94n34, 11215 12021, 124n49, Kierkegaard, Sren, 73, 88n16
124n50, 131n35, 132n35, King, Peter, 67, 85n5
132n36, 132n37, 162 Kolakakowski, Leszek, 32n3
Hlderlin, Fredrich, xiv Koran, the, 280, 28285, 287,
Holland, Eugene, 219n3, 230n3, 28890
259n7 Kordela, A. Kiarina, xxiii, 94n40,
Homer, 29091 219n3, 220n3, 225n28, 226n29,
Horkheimer, Max, 110, 260n9 349n47, 350n50
Hume, David, 12 Koyr, Alexandre, 82, 95n42
Husserl, Edmund, 17, 31415, 317 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 227n39
Igoin, Albert, 219n3 La Fontaine, Jean de, 68

Isaiah, Rabbi Abraham ben, Lacan, Jacques, 84n3, 219n3,
158n53 230n57, 32733, 34144,
Israel, Jonathan, xx, 27, 32n1, 347n25, 248n26, 248n27,
33n5, 35n28, 37n65, 92n30, 248n28, 248n29, 248n30,
103, 130n25, 16163, 166, 174, 248n31, 248n32, 248n36
175n1,175n4, 176n13 Lagre, Jacqueline, 91n24, 274n7
Israel, Manasseh ben, 278 Lautramont, Comte de, 49
Lee Rice, Douglas Den Uyl, 175n3
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, xiii, Leibniz, Gottfried W., xxvn2, 30,
355, 362n10 69, 74, 76, 230n56
Jacobson, Arthur J., xix, xx Lenin, Vladimir, 179
James, Susan, 100, 128n5 Leo X, 106
IND EX 373
Lessing, G. E., xiii McShea, Robert, 33n5

Levi, Primo, 87n11 Mendelssohn, Felix, xiii
Levine, Michael P., 129n17 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 260n10
Levy, Benny, 39 Mondrian, Piet, xxi, 23738, 242
Lipsius, Justus, 265 48, 251, 254, 261n14, 261n15,
Lloyd, Genevieve, xvi, xxvi n6, 302n21
32n2, 33n8, 132n42, 21213, Montag, Warren, xv, xiv, xxxxi,
227n39, 231n67, 292, 301n16 xxvi n13, 33n4, 132n42, 218n3
Locke, John, 16162 Montaigne, Michel de, 67
Lord, Beth, xxvin4 Moore, F. C. T., 85n4, 89n18,
90n21
Macdonald, Cynthia, 35n50 Moreau, Pierre Franois, xxvin3,
Macherey, Pierre, xviii, xxvin6, 11, 175n4, 226n36
12, 26, 29, 33n4, 90n23, 175n4, Morrison, James C., 301n17
219n3, 240, 259n7, 264, 35346, Muller, Christain Philipp, 255
358, 362n7, 362n9, 362n17 Mundle, C. W. K., 36n52
Mack, Michael, xix, 218n2,
131n28, 131n31, 132n43, Nadler, Steven, xxvn1, 32n2,
302n18 35n28, 100101, 129n8, 129n9,
Magris, Claudio, 86n10 130n25, 134n49, 223n24,
Maimondides, Moses, xix, 135, 224n26, 226n30, 227n39,
13855, 159, 16467, 173, 274n4, 351, 361n3
176n8 Negri, Antonio, xvxvi, xxiixxiii,
Malcolm, Noel, 93n31 xxvi n14, xxvi n15, 9, 11, 2627,
Malcolm, Norman, 35n50 29, 34n24, 35n29, 39, 40, 90,
Malevich, Kazimir, 245 102, 128n1, 175n4, 180, 218n3,
Marion, Jean-Luc, 105, 130n2021 219n3, 220n3, 221n4, 231n70,
Marx, Karl, xiv, xx, 4, 1516, 27, 259n6, 302n19
39, 46, 56, 69, 17981, 184, Nietzsche, Friedrich, xiv, 1617,
196201, 216, 218n2, 218n3, 68, 308, 313, 315, 317
219n3, 220n3, 221n3, 221n4, Norris, Christoper, xviii, 32n1,
221n5, 221n6, 221n7, 221n8, 33n7, 34, 37, 39, 51
226n37, 226n40, 226n41, Novalis, xivxv, 18, 264
226n42, 226n43, 226n44, Nussbaum, Martha, 99, 102, 128n1
226n46, 226n47, 226n48,
226n49, 231n70, 233n77, Ockham, William of, 67, 84n4,
223n78, 223n79, 223n80, 237, 86n5, 116, 119
240, 253, 261n16, 308 Oldenburg, Henry, 121, 176n15,
Matheron, Alexandre, 219n3 293
McAdam, James I., 89n20 Olivi, Peter John, 67
McDowell, John, 31, 37n74
McLihna, Marshall, 229n56 Parkinson, G. H. R., 33n8, 36n54
374 I NDEX
Paterson, Sarah, 35n50 Schmitt, Carl, 87n11

Pautrat, Bernard, 42 Schneewind, Jerome B., 11415,
Peeren, Esther, 301n12 131n33, 132n39
Peirce, C. S., 287 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 67
Pironet, Fabienne, 95n44 Schumpeter, Joseph, 68, 72, 86n7
Plato, 17, 42, 85n4, 87n13, 103 Schwitters, Kurt, 251
Pollock, Frederick, 5 Scotus, Duns, 67 86n5, 114, 116,
Pope, Alexander, xvi 119
Popkin, Richard H., 33n6 Segal, Gideon, 32n1
Powell, Michael, 355 Sellars, Wilfrid, 31
Pressburger, Emeric, 355 Sen, Amartya, 68, 72, 88n15
Preuss, Samuel J., 32n2 Seneca, 337
Priest, Stephen, 36n51 Seurat, Georges, 24346
Proust, Marcel, 270 Shakespeare, William, 69, 269
Pythagoras, 267 Shelley, P. B., 295
Shirley, Samuel, 168, 171, 265
Rabelais, Franois, 67 Skousen, Mark, 72, 88n14
Ramond, Charles, 40, 51, 62n2 Smith, Daniel W., 226n28
Rauschenberg, Robert, 244 Smith, Steven B., 32n2, 101,
Rediker, Marcus, 228n49 128n4, 129n11, 129n12, 129n13
Reichenbach, Hans, 35n25 Socrates, 85n4
Reid, Thomas, 67 Spinoza, Baruch: The
Rembrandt, xxii, 27784, 286, Correspondence of
28889, 29092, 294, 296, Spinoza,133n47, 135n51, 256;
298300 Ethics, xi, xiv, xvii, xviii, xix xx,
Renais, Alain, 201 xxiii, xxv n1, 57, 1113, 15,
Rescher, Nicholas, 67, 75, 86n6, 1719, 35n44, 35n45, 3954,
87n13, 88n17, 89n19 5758, 6163, 6578, 80, 84n1,
Rodchenko, Aleksander, 251 90n21, 90n22, 90n23, 90n24,
Rorschach, H., 16 90n25, 90n26, 95n38, 99102,
Rorty, Richard, 36n52 104, 1079, 112, 11618, 120
Rosenthal, David M., 36n51 26, 128n13, 130n35, 132n44,
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 85n4 133n49, 16263, 16667, 173,
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 17 18485, 18790, 218, 222n14,
Rubd, Maximilien, 219n3, 226n36 224n26, 224n27, 226n31, 226n
Russell, Bertrand, 5, 30 32, 226n34, 227n39, 231n65,
231n68, 232n71, 232n72,
Sackville-West, Vita, 266 233n24, 226n31, 226n32,
Saunders, Jason Lewis., 274n7 226n33, 226n34, 226n35,
Schelling, F. W. J., xiv, 35455, 227n39, 231n65, 231n66,
361n8 231n67, 231n6, 232n71,
Schlegal, K. W. F., xiv 232n72, 233, 241, 245, 25760,
INDEX 375
26364, 27374, 294, 300n7, Valentiner, W. R., 300n3

201n18, 31113, 318n1, 32227, van Gogh, Vincent, 279
33237, 339, 34246, 247n17, van Velde, Bram, 269
247n18, 247n19, 248n42, Vardoulakis, Dimitris, xxii, 156,
349n47, 35155; Treatrise on 218
the Emendation of the Intellect, Velzquez, Diego, 260n10
36n53, 36n55, 78, 92n27, 193 Verbeek, Theo, 32n2, 93n32
94, 202, 256; Political Treatise, Vermeer, Johannes, 278
xixii, xvi, xxv n2; Principles of Vernire, Paul, 175n2
Cartesian Philosophy, xxvi n3, Vesey, G. N. A., 35n50
302n23; Short Treatrise on God, Viesel, Hansjrg, 87n11
Man, and His Well-Being,294; Villon, Franois, 67, 84n4
Theological-Political Treatrise, Virno, Paolo, 219n3
xi, xii, xix, xxv n1, 9, 1315, Vodel, Joost van den, 281
33n6, 7980, 93n30, 93n31, Vopa, Anthony J. La, xxxvi n7
94n35, 94n35, 94n36, 94n37,
94n38, 94n39, 104, 142, 15659, Warhol, Andy, 251, 254, 261n20
161, 16366, 16874, 176n9, Weil, Simone, 91n24
176n8, 176n9, 176n10, 176n11, Wienpahl, Paul, 32n1
176n12, 176n13, 176n14, Wiernik, Peter, 223n26
176n15, 176n16, 177, 266, 280, Windelband, Wilhelm, 263
350n57, 356, 362n13 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 36n52, 40,
Stoics, 76, 132n44, 133n44, 206, 74, 76, 266, 274n9, 315
265, 340 Wolf, A., 300n2
Stolze, Ted, xv, 33n4 Wolff, Christain, 67
Strauss, Leo, 33n6, 114, 131n35, Wolfson, Harry Austryn, xiv,
132n37, 132n38 7778, 90n22
Strawson, P. F., 37n70 Woolf, Virginia, 266, 274n10
Styron, William 87n11 Wordsworth, William, 264
Suarez, F., 105, 110, 112, 114
Swan, David, 24 Yovel, Yirmiyahu, xiv, xxvin6,
Swenson, Brynnar, 219n3, 220n3 32n1, 32n2, 259n7, 261n24
Taylor, Kenna C., 72, 86n7, 88n14 Zac, Silvain, 33n6

Thales of Miletus, 194 Zadeh, Khodja, 67
Theophilus, 295 Zeno, 70
Thoburn, Nicholas, 219n3 iek, Slavoj, 193, 225n28, 226n28,
Torah, the, 142, 145, 146, 148, 33132, 338, 341, 348n48,
15054, 176n8 348n44, 348n47
Zupko, Jack, 95n43, 95n44
Uhlmann, Anthony, xxi, 275n15,
300n7

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Spinoza Now: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Part I. Strategies for Reading Spinoza

Part II. Politics, Theology, and Interpretation

Part IV. Encounters about Life and Death

the various translations of Spinozas works offer often signifi-

Spinoza Now attempts to place Spinoza in a contemporary context.

the title of this collectionSpinoza Nowhighlights the im-

such philosophizing because it borders on fantasy or could be put

naturea position that was understood to lead to Spinozas atheism.

his position at Jena University, where his students included Hegel

book, that is, on presenting the structure or system of the work as

and universalismor what has come to be understood as modernity.

The two aspects of the titleSpinozas own emphasis on the now

The geometrical order creates a web of relations that structure the

Spinoza proposes in the Theologico-Political Treatise or the notion of

humans mind and actions. This crucial Spinozan insight is missing,

Part III takes up the issues discussed in the previous chapters to

antimodernist philosophers, yet here the similarities end, for ulti-

bondage of affectwhich also means the attainment of wisdom.

Janouch mentions the following comment that Franz Kaf ka made

Accident is the name one gives to the coincidence of events, of

Kaf ka unwittingly expresses himself as a true Spinozist here. There

The insistence on the now in Spinozas philosophy is about this gap

correspondence. The best biography of Spinoza is Steven Nadlers

15 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy

if there has always been a new Spinoza, this is no doubt because

of method, doctrine, and principle yet that likewise manage to put

the currency of commonsense or ideological belief.10 Indeed, the

as the basis for any rational account of knowledge as conducive

third kind of knowledge, that which involves a direct apprehension

case for the role of philosophy in achieving a clearer, more distinct

matters of culturalhistorical or psychobiographical interest and the

or sociohistorical background but as offering the only adequate

Thus the main thrust of interpretations like those mentioned

In short, as these commentators acknowledge, the free will

aimed toward resisting or breaking the hold of intuitive, self-evident,

So there is another side to the recent reception-history, one that has

However, it is worth recalling once again how urgent were the

a double reading of Spinoza: on the one hand, a systematic read-

(or discover) in advance the main theoretical apparatus of Marxist

to such instances of deep-laid scholarlycritical dispute, given that

such as (at opposite extremes) a metaphysician such as Parmenides

Thus Donald Davidson cites Spinoza as the one early-modern

in which Spinoza sets out his cardinal distinction between active

passage, where his usual, briskly problem-solving tone gives way

that I do not see how even the most complete understanding of

So it seems that Davidsons theory of anomalous monism is not

massive distortionunless one interprets it in equally uncompromis-

mind-talk can perfectly well be reconciled just so long as one assigns

through an emendation of the intellect that would lead from

full strength and the anomaly interpreted not as an absence of real,

metaphysical themes, or pursuing them (so to speak) in a full-blood-

is also fairly clear how Spinoza could be read as offering support

freedom of thought and expression, cosmopolitanism in the political,